The Hanged Man
by Lady Lazarus 00
Summary: Before he died, Albus Dumbledore made a request. It's now up to his murderer to see it done. Again. SS, OFC, DD, and the Malfoys
1. No Sleep for the Wicked

Disclaimer: Jo sowed the seeds, I'm just planting a few weeds of my own in her garden.

A/N: This fic is a rambling little ditty, about 50 percent immediately post-HBP (1997), 50 percent flashbacks to pre-Philosopher's Stone (1991). It does involve an OFC very heavily, so, if that idea bothers you, please don't read it. I try to develop my original characters, and I certainly don't feel they're super-witches. Messalina Branch is no Hermione Granger. And I wouldn't say this is exactly a romance, in the traditional sense.

Fun facts to know and share: The Hanged Man is the 12th card in the major arcana of the tarot deck.

Please read and review: it makes Snape so much easier to manage.

**The Hanged Man**

_On the ninth day, the Hanged Man climbs a tree and dangles upside down, giving up all that he is, wants, or cares about. The Hanged Man is hanging between two worlds, able to see both. He waits. Connections he never understood are made, mysteries revealed. But, timeless as this moment of clarity may seem, he realizes it will not last. Very soon he must right himself and when he does, things will be different. He will have to act on what he's learned._

_We imagine the Hanged Man to be the victim of some dastardly deed: but our projections miss the mark. The Hanged Man is not struggling to right himself. He has surrendered to the situation. He tells us that, whatever is at stake, sacrifices must be made to attain the goal._

_The Hanged Man was once seen as a traitor: but, we see now, he has sacrificed himself._

_--Aeclectic Tarot, "The Hanged Man"_

_Chapter One: No Sleep for the Wicked_

As he lifted the boy's thin frame onto the bed, adjusting the pillows and folding the soft, cool sheets, he couldn't suppress the briefest pang of envy. His body ached for rest, muscles creaking, shivering near the point of collapse. The mere sight of the bed had filled him with an almost narcotic heaviness, and, for the first time, he became aware of the burning in his eyes, the slow, tympanic rhythm of each tired breath.

But then he looked down at the boy, so sickly and thin. He had melted over the last few months, naturally ice-cut features thawed into the sallow pallor Snape recognized all too well.

Then, of course, he remembered what awaited the boy when he woke, when they were called. No, he couldn't begrudge the boy those last peaceful moments—the purgatory of sleep before his descent.

_Their_ descent, he reminded himself absently, tilting two more amber droplets into Draco's glazed eyes.

Besides, there was more work to be done. _No sleep for the wicked_, he mocked himself, somehow hearing the words echo back at him in Dumbledore's rasping voice.

The summer air had seeped into the house after them and, not knowing how Muggles went about altering the temperature in their homes, his easiest recourse was to remove a few tattered layers of black. He barely had the energy to make it back down the stairs, let alone to walk through every room casting cooling charms.

Removing his cloak and reclining finally on the sofa, he found the bared skin of his forearms just as beaten as the garments had been, piebald black and blue and streaked with deep gashes of dry brown. Judging from the creeping pain across his back, he could only guess he'd find it in similar condition. _Damn hippogriff._

No. He deserved more. Much more. A few cuts, a few bruises, a ruined cloak—that was all he had to show for--

Severus…please… 

He shook his head. _Not now._ This wasn't the time to have it clouding his mind, clogging his thoughts. There would be plenty of time over the next days, months, years for the manic battle of self flagellation and self pity: but not now. Only two days until they would be called: a very narrow stretch of time to finish it—his last contribution to the Order.

The Order.

The Order that was probably, even now, carrying away the body, counting the casualties…

And hating his black, traitorous guts.

He didn't know where the others had run to—Alecto, Amycus, Fenrir. But then, of course, that had been the plan. _His_ plan. To disperse, to hide in case, somehow, the inept Ministry hoards hunting him took their heads from their arses long enough to catch his scent. No one, above all, must endanger the location of their Lord, and, after killing the most beloved wizard of the century, people, he imagined, would be combing the country like goddamned kneazles. Kill some Auror or Ministry official, and they'll look for you. Kill Albus Dumbledore and they'll _find_ you.

Severus…please… 

His clenched fist swung out at the quiet, dim lamp beside him. It shattered on the tile with feeling.

That bastard. That _bastard_.

The same anger swelled through his belly—the same anger he'd felt, that had let him speak those words.

How dare he? How dare he ask that—demand _that_? Asking him to die was one thing: that was the bargain they had struck. But asking him to—no, it was too much.

He shook his head again, glancing up at the Muggle clock that blinked down from a contraption he couldn't begin to identify. 11:58.

Where in the hell was she? He hadn't expected this…waiting. He'd expected her to be there, asleep. He'd expected to burst in, argue, cajole—force, if necessary. But the waiting: it was inexplicably worse.

What if she didn't return at all? What if she'd gone on holiday or was staying over with some obnoxious Muggle lover? Albus hadn't thought it through. He'd taken too much for granted. The bastard.

He'd tried to warn him: he'd tried to explain what Narcissa was asking. What things would come to if—

Not "if" –not anymore. He suddenly wished he hadn't already smashed the lamp.

The click at the door was followed immediately by the click of his muscles as he jumped up, wand ready. His own alertness surprised him. He'd thought his adrenaline stores all but evaporated by now.

There's always a little more, isn't there, he thought bitterly. Always that cowardly reserve to keep you alive, to help you _survive_.

The door didn't open. He watched it close, heard the quickened draw of breath behind its wooden face as she too waited, listening. He could hear the steady tattoo of his heart strangling his eardrum. More waiting, waiting, while the slight tinkle of her keys filled the silent house like a tolling bell.

"Who's there?"

His breath caught. He knew better than to speak and risk a forced chase down the Muggle street. He moved slowly, slipping with his requisite stealth further out of view.

A crack of the door exposed pale shadows across her eyes. "Who's there?"

More silence.

She slipped in slow, wand gripped before her more like a knife than anything magical. She gripped something else in her other hand, but he couldn't make it out.

"I'm warning you: I don't know how you found this place, but—" She paused, and he could see her staring at his shadow, grip on her wand growing tighter." Severus, is that you?"

Good, she didn't run. That was a sign that she hadn't heard…

"Close the door."

But she made no move to comply. In fact, she did nothing except expel a ragged breath.

"Yes, I'd recognize that dungeon stench anywhere." A light flicked on, stinging his already sleep-sore eyes, exposing him completely.

"Close the door."

She hadn't changed much in the last six years, not on first glance. She was as unassuming and plain as ever in those oddly-cut clothes Muggle healers wore, and she'd cut her hair shorter, to the shoulders. She'd grown a bit thicker about the waist, but the years, he supposed had been good to her: or at least better than they had been to him.

There was something in her eyes, however, that wasn't the same. They looked tired and cold where once he'd observed an eagerness—or, at times, rage. They were impassive windows now, and looking into them felt like staring out at a dreary day. It was, he recognized, a sure sign of the death of youth.

"I see you and the lamp had a disagreement." Her voice affected a joke, but she hadn't yet moved to lower her wand. Those gray eyes were raking the room, searching, he could only assume, for someone else.

"Close the door, Lina."

"No—I don't think so. Not until you tell me who else is with you." She turned slightly, ensuring that her back wouldn't literally be forced against a wall. "Not that I don't love it when you drop in, Severus. Unannounced. At midnight. For the first time in—"

He watched her inching her way towards the door, threatening flight. He was in no mood—nor physical state—to play these games with anyone. Let alone her. His fingers snagged the bony wrist of her wand hand firmly, wrenching it to his chest and slamming the door hard behind.

And then, pain.

Dancing white and blue pain boring through his already overwrought eyes. Lungs filling with the heavy weight of spice and fire. He was blind, he was blind—He fell, stumbling backwards, already-torn hand landing on shards of broken ceramic.

Somehow, he'd managed to keep hold of his wand, and, before his mind had a chance to register the blinding pain attacking it from all sides, he petrified her. The thud of her wand on the tile assured him the body bind had hit its mark and that he was free, for the moment, to wallow in his sudden, overwhelming incapacitation.

"What the—hell—did you do?" He seethed and swore, palming his face to ensure his eyes were still, in fact, in his head. He found them in their usual place, streaming wet with slime and tears. Marshalling what little control he could, he reached forward, groping across the floor for whatever else might have fallen from his assailant's hands.

It was a small canister, but without his vision he had no idea what it might be. A poison of some sort, he assumed, and that, surely, he could remedy.

He found his wand once more, aimed it at his eyes as best he could and whispered. You couldn't teach potions to inept teenagers for sixteen years without learning a few spells to cure the effects of treacherous exploding liquids.

Slowly, the watering of his eyes ebbed, and his vision came reluctantly back in blinking patches of white and gray. After several long moments, he could make out her motionless form, expression frozen in satisfaction.

He took his time standing, brushing glass from his robes and wiping at his swollen eyes. He retrieved the offending canister from his feet, turning it over, examining. _Stay Safe Personal Mace_. He was familiar with some of the Muggle chemicals and their wizarding equivalents, and, if his face hadn't felt remarkably like a pincushion, he might have been intrigued.

At length he flicked his wand, releasing only her head, moving close enough to glare down through his reddened eyes into hers. "I ask again: what was that?"

Her gaze turned away, cold. "Muggle magic."

The bestial, sadistic part of him—the part made crueler still by exhaustion and the lingering ache in his lungs—yearned to empty the rest of the canister in the frozen woman's eyes. But he needed, more than anything, her eyes, and, he had, afterall, been sadistic enough for one day. He resigned himself to tucking the offensive liquid into his pockets, filing it away for further study.

"Now, if you're done with your attempts at crude Muggle assault, I'm going to release you. _However_," his voice dropped to the dangerous silk he'd all but perfected after a long tenure as Slytherin, Death Eater, and teacher, "I will warn you _not_ to try that again. I promise you're in no danger—unfortunately." He stooped down to pick up her wand and toss it aside. _Not, of course, that it mattered…_

"Who else is here?"

He raised an eyebrow and was immediately met with renewed irritation, both from eyestrain and from the clear mistrust in her tone.

"I noticed the curtains were pulled; I never close them. And, since the location of my residence is somewhat—exclusive—and I gather you closed them to conceal something—you'll understand if I don't offer you some tea and ask how you've been…"

Damn it. He ought to have remembered the obsessive, paranoid attention to detail. It was one of her more _charming_ qualities.

He didn't know how to begin telling her about the boy now sleeping, near comatose, on her beige cotton sheets. It was the first in a long line of difficult questions he hadn't wanted to answer. Somehow, foolishly, he'd hoped it wouldn't come up.

"Is Albus here?"

They punched him, those words, pummeled what was left of the strength and the rage. He sank onto the sofa once more.

There was no sidestepping the difficulty. He would have to tell her everything—about Draco, about Dumbledore, about himself. He felt the exhaustion sneaking up his limbs again, drowning out even the lingering burn in his chest. This day—this damned day—was never going to end.

"Albus…is dead."

The clutching silence returned, rolling between them heavy and solid as stone.

He searched her expression for some discernible emotion but found no shock or grief or anger at all. Just the same weariness, the same quiet chill. Her eyes stayed, searchlight pale, away from his.

Her lips, however, parted slightly, and, he imagined, if it could, her entire body would betray her.

"For Circe's sake, let me go, you git."

He did, and she lowered solemnly onto the armchair across from him. He could see the shadows of thought sliding across her face while she sat, staring at her hands.

He wondered which question she'd ask first: which horrible explanation he'd have to give.

"How—how did it happen?"

Damn. That had to be the one, didn't it? His hand found his wand once more, making certain he could petrify her again if necessary.

"I killed him."

It felt strange to say it. He hadn't said it aloud yet: somehow, it seemed to make it much, much worse. He couldn't blame her if she ran: maybe he'd even let her go. What right did he have to go running again tonight, chasing down someone else, raising his wand…

But the woman made no further movements, either to flee or renew attack. She kept her eyes to her lap, her voice a mere wisp of breath. "So…he made that choice, did he? Hmm."

It was his turn to feel, suddenly, at a loss. "What do you—have you been talking with Albus?"

"We—discussed the matter briefly."

"When? How? He couldn't come here, and you certainly couldn't have—"

"Are you okay?"

The question caught him completely off guard—the effect she doubtlessly hoped for. "What?"

"_Are you okay_? You look like the backside of a blast-ended skrewt." The annoyance in her voice was the most emotion she'd allowed herself yet.

"I'm wonderful, Lina. Terrific. I'm thinking of getting a Time Turner just so I can relive this joyous day over and over—"

She didn't appear to register any of his remarks, still lost in the clicking lockstep of her thoughts. He felt his eyes fall of their own accord to her lips. She'd pursed them slightly and, for a moment, he found himself lost in a different terrible day altogether.

"Severus--who else is with you?" She was looking at him again, hard, and he knew there was no avoiding the question this time.

"Draco Malfoy."

So there _was_ something that could stir emotion in her…

She was on her feet instantly, transformed and alive.

"_Before _you do anything stupid: it couldn't be helped. He was with me when—it—happened. I've given him a very large dose of Dreamless Sleep. He'll be unconscious for at least 24 hours."

No effect. She was pacing now, ripping her hands through her hair to a tempo near frantic. "And then? You can't keep him asleep forever—"

"I don't intend to. I have more than enough potion to keep him sleeping until we leave."

Strands of hair slammed back down across her cheeks. "Leave? You're not—"

"No. In fact, we'll only be trespassing on your _hospitality_ long enough to take care of some—business of Albus'. Two days at the most."

"Oh."

She'd returned to her chair, though her hand had found its way to her hair again, pulling it tight from her face. The years had indeed been kind to her, he observed again, noting only a few burgeoning lines near her mouth as she frowned. But she hadn't seen near as many years as he, and he found himself suddenly wondering what she had been doing here, trapped in this Muggle house.

Merlin, he must be tired, to let his mind wander like this…

"I just assumed you'd come to—I mean, after all, with you as the Keeper—"

"No. We've only two days until I expect to be—summoned," he finished with a disgusted snarl.

He'd never seen anyone pale so quickly.

He knew, of course, what she'd assumed. That he'd come here for refuge, to hide out for a while, perhaps indefinitely. And, as loathe as he was to admit it, some part of him wanted it--wanted the rest. Messalina Branch wouldn't be his ideal choice of housemate—but then, he didn't have an ideal choice. And, considering the alternative…

But then it would have been for nothing. He had promises to Dumbledore—and to the other Master. And besides, there was Draco to consider.

"You're—going back? To him?" The fear trickled through her voice, though she was clearly trying to dam it.

"Merlin's teeth, Branch, you know as well as I do that's the whole point of the thing. And stop eyeing me like some nervous rabbit. I wouldn't have dreamed of imposing on your _privacy_ if I didn't have to. I'll be sure your name and whereabouts aren't mentioned. I'm here for Albus—no one else."

He almost regretted saying the words, watching her, her eyes flashing and fading, taking refuge behind a curtain of hair. He knew he'd hurt her, and, for a moment, he considered apologizing, telling her what he'd really meant: that he had no intention of selling her out to Voldemort. That he'd guard her secret with his life. But he held his tongue, merely waiting for her to recover. This was no social call, and no apologies or pleasantries were going to smooth over the hurt he'd caused, now or then.

_Or the hurt you're about to force on her again, you bastard._

Yes, he was a bastard. But, after committing murder a mere three hours earlier, he was finding it even easier than usual to play the role.

"What did Albus want?" She didn't look up.

He, too, turned away, unwilling to see her hunched and wounded. "He asked me to do this before—tonight. I was to wait until the summer term and bring you…this."

She looked up in time to see him pull a smallish silver box from his robes. The silver had tarnished slightly, but it still shone in the light, the opal moon set on the lid cracked in half like an egg.

"Oh bugger," she swore, lifting the box from his hand, face drawn in disgust. She didn't open it; merely watched, eyes gleaming with what Snape knew must be the beginning of tears.

"The Headmaster retrieved them from the Ministry's care. They had been confiscated from their owner after he was sent to Azkaban. Apparently the Headmaster informed the Aurors that they had been obtained through illegal means and that it was only fair to return them to their rightful owner."

They were no longer the beginning of tears: they had become two tiny pools of sea, welling, threatening to burst their shores. "And why would Albus ask you to bring them to me?"

It had all the anatomy of a question, but they both knew that for all its interrogatives and rising tones, it was a plea. _Please take them back. Please go._

But Snape had no intention of going now. Albus had made him suffer; now it was her turn. At least, when it was done, she could return to her normal life, walk down the streets—look at herself in the mirror.

_You really are a bastard, Snape. You really are._

No, by no stretch of the imagination could Lina Branch be said to have a normal life. And she certainly wouldn't be able to walk down any wizarding streets for a while.

He took a deep breath, trying as hard as he could to soften his demeanor. "He wants the same thing he wanted six years ago, Lina. He wants you to use your gift to aid the Order." And that, he growled to himself, sounded very, very familiar. The bastard.

"Oh—is that all?"

She slammed the box onto the table between them, hard and final like a gavel. Her eyes were sparking again, though still overfull with tears. "No, Snape. I remember what happened the last time he sent you to me talking about using my gifts for the side of good…" Before he could register it, she was on her feet, yelling down at him, entire body rigid with a kind of grief-stricken rage that, deep down, Snape completely understood—understood better than anyone else could, perhaps. Albus possessed—no, _had_ possessed—a way of producing that in people with an overgrowth of conscience and glaringly bitter hearts.

"Actually, Snape…" She wasn't crying anymore: it was pure, apoplectic fury. She tore across the room to a cupboard behind him, and, despite his better judgment, he turned to watch her. He wasn't entirely sure she wasn't hiding another one of those damnable canisters somewhere.

Instead, what she produced from the cupboard's innards was a vial. A small vial full of shining silver. "Actually, Severus, I _don't_ remember what happened. But you—you and Albus were good enough to leave me _this_. Just in case I ever wondered why no one was able to find my house or why I absolutely could never show my face in a wizarding town again—"

And, without warning, she hurled the vial savagely. It struck him in the head and, falling to the tile, exploded, tiny silver beads pooling and congealing at his feet like droplets of mercury.

"You're not going to do it again, Severus. You're not going to waltz in here, ask this of me, and then leave me to wake up the next morning, all alone, with some stupid little vial to remember it all by!"

Her gray eyes darted frantically as if searching for something else to hurl in his direction.

"Lina, sit down and _shut up._ You're not—"

"No, Snape. The answer is _no_. I don't owe Dumbledore anything. And whatever I might have owed you—well, you didn't come here for _that._"

"Lina, I didn't—" But he was too tired, too weak. He couldn't find the words to explain: to explain that he was too tired and too numb to even begin to talk about _that_.

"No, Snape. You said what you came to say. Now scamper off to your little Dark Lord and get the hell out of my house." She turned on her heels, taking the stairs in a storm of ire. "If you're not gone in half an hour, I'm flooing the Ministry. I may not be able to tell them the address, but they'll sure as hell be waiting on the street corner when you crawl out from under this rock."

Above, a door slammed, and she was gone.

Any other day, he would have followed her. Any other day his own tongue would have stabbed back, asking her how she could so wantonly dismiss the wishes of a man who had put his trust in her, who had helped protect her; how she could hear he was dead, murdered, and not bat so much as a grieved eyelash.

But not today. Today, all those words seemed to reek of hypocrisy. Because, honestly, he wanted nothing more than to slam the door shut himself. To lock it all out.

Perhaps she would calm down. Or perhaps she'd floo the Ministry, and he'd truly be forced to apparate away, Dumbledore's last request as dead as—

He leaned forward, dropping his head in his hands. A large silver pool shivered beside his boot, reflecting his lined face back at him in manic, fractured glimpses.

He didn't need a pensieve to remember the memories he'd given her, the copies of those left in his mind, all clamoring for a chance to torment him further.

He didn't have the luxury of stowing them away in a cupboard.

Groaning, he leaned down to the floor. He repaired and retrieved the empty vial, sliding its mouth through the silver liquid. The memories raced back inside the glass greedily.

More waiting…waiting.

He held the vial up to the light and watched the mock-image of his own black eyes dance across the past.


	2. Extract of Vanilla

Chapter Two: Extract of Vanilla 

_May, 1991_

He would never, never understand this Muggle money.

He'd managed, after several disastrous scouting expeditions, to navigate the aisles of Powell's Market itself. He'd spent at least an hour among the Muggle bathroom products, hunting for something base enough to counteract the acidity of Murlap. The racks and racks of spices on aisle three had sent his mind reeling in further frustration and (though he was loathe to admit it) wonder. He certainly would never understand—nor did he care to—how Muggles made it through the day.

This weekend had been aisle three again; there'd been no avoiding it. With the prospect of marking final exams looming, he'd be in need of extra stores of Migraine Mixture. And, as he had discovered several years back, a few bottles of the Muggle "extract of vanilla" were particularly useful for masking the overwhelming bitterness of his singularly strong formulation.

So, upon finding the cupboards at Spinner's End all but bare, he had made his mind up to the outing. Every fluorescent-lit, noisome moment of these excursions filled him with disgust and dread; but the alternative, visiting shops in Diagon Alley, was even less enjoyable. He'd discovered that fact very quickly.

As a boy, the mere thought of a trip to Diagon Alley had thrilled him. The shops were always bustling and alive, hiding treasures he didn't yet know he wanted. The bookshops had been particular delights, and he soon found himself on a first name basis with almost every one of their proprietors. When things at home became unpleasant, he would slip out a window and catch the Knight Bus to Toil and Trouble Tomes where, ensconced in a well-worn armchair, he could surround himself with whatever volumes caught his eye. The owner, a Mister Jeremiah Hawkins, had taken an interest in recommending progressively harder and thicker texts, and, on occasion, brought him a butterbeer when he finished an especially complex one.

But things, as they always do, had changed. His first trip to the Cup and Cauldron had been enough to teach him that lesson.

It was his first term after the Fall. The Longbottoms had just been taken, and, of course, he'd been in need of supplies for the start of school. He'd entered shop after shop with the same result: cold stares, mothers clutching their children a little closer, barely concealed whispers. And then, the venerable gentleman at the Cup and Cauldron who had vehemently informed him that, having lost an Auror son in the fight against You-Know-Who, he was not inclined to do business with Death Eaters—no matter how Albus Dumbledore felt.

And he'd found, quickly enough, that he wasn't inclined to take his business there either. In fact, he took his business out of Diagon Alley altogether. He didn't even return to Mister Hawkins; he didn't want to hear what that gentleman thought of how he'd put to use all the knowledge gleaned from generously loaned books.

He had, before each trip to Powell's, considered taking his business to Knockturn Alley instead. But that, he guessed, would merely bring about a different set of memories and familiar faces altogether.

And the entire purpose of these occasional weekends away from Hogwarts was relaxation and study. A few days in which he could be his solitary, unpleasant self with no teenage hijinks to interrupt his reading and no twinkle-eyed headmasters trying to "cheer him up." His face and his past were too well-known in the wizarding world; in the Muggle market he could be just another snarky sod.

So he'd left the comfort of Spinner's End to retrieve the extract. He made certain to gather any other ingredients he might need over the next year as well. No sense, of course, in making the trip more than absolutely necessary. Being anonymous was refreshing; being alone was better.

But, despite his improvement in navigating the aisles, he still couldn't make heads or tails of the wad of coins and paper now balled, helter-skelter, in his hand. And, as he unfolded them, sifting and dropping them left and right, the grumbling of the customers at his back was growing unmistakably more savage.

"Fifty-two pounds fifty, sir," the teenage boy at the register repeated—for the third time. The red hair and spotted face reminded him of those Weasley twits, and he suppressed, with some difficulty, a rising urge to exercise a little nonverbal hexing.

Instead he settled for tugging at the ill-fitting collar of the Muggle shirt he'd chosen. The Muggle sizing system was another arena he'd yet to master, and the only number he could remember was that of a sweatshirt his father's sister had given him as a boy. Apparently, Muggle sizes were not as forgiving as those of wizarding robes. A tailoring spell to refit the troublesome apparel had hardly seemed worth the effort.

"Um, one of the red ones."

It came from behind him in a discreet whisper. He prepared his best scowl and threw it over his shoulder.

The offending busybody was a tall, mouse-haired young woman who couldn't have been much older than the cashier. She wasn't smiling and didn't seem at all intimidated by his glare. She simply raised her eyebrows and nodded at his paper-and-metal hand. "A red one and two of the biggish coins."

"Thanks," he spat, turning back to the puzzle. He examined the bills again with this in mind; the only problem was he didn't _see_ any red ones…

"Here, this one, there." She'd taken hold of his hand before he realized it, pulling it closer to her. The touch was abrupt and startling, and he almost protested. But, he reasoned, watching the girl's fingers work through the bills dexterously, if she could get him out of that place and that ridiculous costume sooner, so much the better.

She however, did not.

Just as she'd straightened through the tangle of paper, she froze, fingers jerking away as if grabbing a hot plate. Her whole body recoiled, and the glass bottle she'd been holding crashed to the floor, lukewarm apple juice lapping over his boots, sneaking through the seams and into his socks.

"Bugger. Clean up on two! Can I get somebody here?"

"I—oh—I'm sorry," she stammered, glancing only briefly back at him before leaning down to retrieve her other items. Her hands, so nimble just moments before, trembled slightly.

Staring down, frustration building to a crescendo, it took him a moment to realize the cause of so violent a reaction.

From beneath the bottom of his ill-fitting left sleeve, the extremely pale, reddish outline of a skull stared out through empty eyes. Normally it could not be seen, but lately, over the last month, its shadow had begun, ever so slightly, to darken.

_Damn it. So much for anonymity…_

She afforded him only the shortest of glances before moving her items to the next register. Another spot-faced teenager replaced her, sliding a mop indecorously across his boots.

_Yes, go on, run away._ All too familiar, wasn't it?

But that was just it. She did look…familiar. She was young enough to have been at Hogwarts during his tenure, but he couldn't seem to place her among the unfortunate catalogue of previous students. He certainly had never been aware of any witches or Squibs living in the area. But, when she had looked at him, those stricken eyes—he'd seen them before.

"Sir? Fifty-two Pounds fifty?"

The well-honed glower was, at least, not wasted on the boy. _No, Severus. Hexing teenage Muggles is _not_ the way to keep out of Azkaban._

He spotted the girl in line again several registers away, and he could feel her assiduously _not_ looking his way. Her hand, still shaking almost imperceptibly, was pushing, nervous, through her hair.

_Too nervous by half_, he thought, still trying to place her. There was definitely something to it, that reaction. If she was someone he knew, he supposed he shouldn't be surprised. But he was sure of one thing; he could not risk word of his Muggle excursion going public. He had a very carefully manicured reputation, and, in the circles in which he moved, such a revelation could result in more than harmless, back-alley gossip.

"Oi! Are you paying or what?" The boy had, apparently, recovered from the glower.

Giving him a second dose, Snape slammed the entire wad of money down and tore from the market, each step squishing with the sugary glue of apple juice.

* * *

The girl didn't emerge for several minutes, but, when she did, it was at an almost breakneck pace. He watched for a moment, trying to decide upon the best means of approach. Judging by her reaction, he didn't think a friendly hullo would do. And, with juice soaking halfway up his socks, he didn't think he could muster anything so amiable.

Well, if it was a Death Eater she expected, it was a Death Eater she'd get…

He rounded the market corner and Apparated with a pop.

But she was already half a block ahead of his destination, and he knew that this approach was only going to result in Apparition-induced nausea. If she wasn't going to slow down and cooperate—

Several feet ahead, the bottom of her grocery sack tore open, spilling cans and boxes into the gutter. He heard her swear loudly, and, as she leaned down yet again to retrieve her items, he closed the gap.

"Allow me."

He grabbed a stray can, making sure to take an inconspicuous hold on her wrist as well.

And, he immediately realized, it was a good thing he had. The gray eyes staring up at him were those of a woman ready to abandon her belongings and _run._

"Relax," he purred, with a bit more threat than he'd intended. Old habits die hard, they said, and he certainly couldn't deny that the frailty of her thin wrist and the distinct fluttering of her pulse under his grasp filled him with an all too familiar thrill. It came back to him, through the haze of many years. Like riding a bicycle, it was.

But he'd never been able to suppress that other instinct, that overwhelming reflex born of a heavy, insistent conscience. He'd never been able to enjoy that look of fear—that look of revulsion-- on a woman's face.

"You were so _helpful_ at the market. I just thought I'd return the favor." He held out the can with mock flourish.

"Th-thank you. Now let me go."

"I'd be more than happy to, if you'll satisfy my curiosity. What in the world would a Muggle like yourself know about _this_?" Vaguely aware that the low silk of his words was quickening the cadence against his palm, he allowed the faint mark to slither free again, razzing out at them with its serpentine tongue.

She had grown very still, coiled. "I'll scream."

"No, I think you'd rather stay here in this lovely public street for our little chat. Unless, of course, you'd prefer I help you Apparate someplace more…_private_…"

Her lips pressed tight.

"Yes, as I said, there's no need to scream. I'm merely curious as to why you'd feel the need to douse my boot in apple juice over this trifling tattoo—or, perhaps, you've seen it before?"

There it was. A spark of anger. Suddenly, with the flicker of defiance in her eyes, she looked very familiar indeed.

"So, not a Muggle after all."

"A—a Squib." She seemed to blurt it before thinking better. It was a braver—or stupider—admission than he'd have expected, to admit to helplessness while still firmly in his grip.

But it did begin to explain the fear. Perhaps a little honesty, a different tack, could speed up the process. "You—look familiar. Your parents were…"

Her lips pressed tighter. _Or perhaps not._

"…at Hogwarts?"

"Slytherins," she answered quickly, as if expecting it would be the key to her release.

And it almost was. He almost dropped her wrist, afraid that he must know her parents. It would explain her familiarity and, of course, a quite intimate knowledge of the Dark Mark. And, that being the case, manhandling one of his fellow's daughters, even if she was a Squib, hardly seemed advised. He doubted any father would take kindly to such an affront.

But he held firm, settling for a softer tone. "And…their names? Someone of my…acquaintance?"

The same tight-lipped silence.

As far as he knew, none of his closest Slytherin colleagues had a Squib daughter, though that was unsurprising as most of them would have been likelier to admit to a particularly nasty case of hemorrhoids. In which case, he realized, with a rather pragmatic rush of relief, he didn't need to worry overmuch. Knowledge of "weak blood" amongst any of his acquaintances would be more than a bargaining chip; it could ruin the reputation of any self-respecting Slytherin. Blackmail, in his experience, was always worth cataloging when it came your way.

Suddenly he felt far more eager to pry the information from her lips, and accordingly, he felt the pressure of his grasp tightening. "Come now…their names?"

Nothing.

Again unsurprising. Her parents had probably sworn her to the greatest secrecy to prevent just such an unlikely occurrence as had now come to pass.

Watching her debate the situation in her own mind, he tried to run through a list of those most likely to have hidden away or disowned the girl. Macnair was old enough, as was Julius Avery, but she was too tall and slender to have come from any amount of Macnair's stock, and certainly too attractive to have come from Avery's. In fact, he could rule out a good number of his old friends simply based on physical appearance. Most of them, like himself, could have mated with a Veela and not managed a progeny that even approached pleasant-looking. A Black, perhaps. He didn't know if Regulus or Bellatrix had ever produced children, and he strained to see a resemblance in the young woman's face.

No, this was ridiculous. He could find out just as easily by—

He grabbed her chin, forcing her eyes to his. "Their names, my dear. Perhaps you could extend them my felicitations, if…" He began to push forward into her eyes.

"Branch. Antigone Branch."

He paused. No—the name didn't ring any Slytherin bells, which was in itself odd. He was no social butterfly, but, as a Slytherin, you got to know everyone. Someone was always related; someone could always trace ancestors down some tangled, vaguely inbred family tree.

But this was a name he'd never heard. "And your father?" Her pale eyes blinked so close that he could make out tiny flecks of blue and brown amongst the gray.

She remained silent long enough for him to begin again, pushing forward to where the face and emotion lay, no doubt on the vulnerable surface of her mind. "No—I—I don't know. He left my mother when I was a baby—"

"Liar," he whispered, pressing harder. He didn't need Legilimency to detect this falsehood; her parents might have been Slytherins, but she certainly wasn't. He pressed again, even harder.

"Please…don't…"

But he didn't hear her as he bored through, feeling her mind open up before his.

A flash, and he saw it. Skull and snake, pale, threaded trace of red across paper-white skin. But this Mark was not like his; it was warped somehow, as if someone had sketched it, haphazard and uneven. He'd never seen the Mark look so—disgusting. The snake protruding from the skull's mouth seemed only half existent, tapered head and tongue faded as if it had burrowed under the flesh and into the blood. He pushed further, harder, searching for a face, an explanation—

He ran, brain first, into a wall.

It was as haphazard as the Mark had been. It was weak and desperate. But it was a wall nonetheless.

And, more than that, it was blocking him, moving frantic with his every attempt to circumvent it.

This time he did release her, eyes and wrist, with the gaping, sudden fear of one who'd just been had.

She was still shaking, still near frozen. But he couldn't miss the look of relief that had injected itself into her taut features. Relief and—satisfaction.

"A Squib, eh?" he grasped, trying to regain some foothold in the situation. Perhaps she was Slytherin material after all.

But he had no chance to find out.

With no further word, no further explanation, she had bolted, out of sight in a second, leaving him standing vexed and alone amidst an abandoned collection of toilet tissue and produce.

* * *

At the end of term, it was not unusual for the Headmaster's office to be a little busy. O.W.L.S. and N.E.W.T.S. meant an influx of students—many with excuses for poor performance, and even more with impassioned pleas for a second chance. There were always one or two overachievers—almost exclusively Ravenclaws—who were thrown into nervous and self-destructive funks over questions missed. They were inevitably referred to Dumbledore for his pitiful assurances that an A in Potions did not mean they were failures or that any aspirations of mediwitchery or Auroring or heading the Bureau of Magical Law Enforcement were forever foiled. Snape grimaced. If it were up to him, anyone who couldn't withstand the pressures of a Potions exam wouldn't be trusted with the lives of so many others.

And then there was the other group of students—almost all Slytherins. With only a few weeks left in the term, the Slytherins who braved Dumbledore's office were one of two types. One group—and he could probably guess the likeliest candidates from his class rolls—were the sort who, with limited time left in the castle, took their last few days to execute the pranks they'd been planning all year. There was always an exploding toilet or five. Last year, a particularly daring seventh year Slytherin had slipped one of the Heads of House a small dose of Lasciviolixir, resulting in some more than amusing scenes between Pomona Sprout and Filus Flitwick. No one was ever certain which of them had actually been under the influence. That particular Slytherin had gone out a house hero.

And then the second group of Slytherins—for Slytherins they always were. Snape viewed them with the greatest pity—and the greatest fear for he was sure that, in his time, Voldemort had been one of them. They were the students who requested, every year, to be allowed to remain at Hogwarts for the summer. They were the ones, Snape imagined, who looked forward to home like his had been; those who could use an armchair and a butterbeer in Diagon Alley as he'd had.

Today however, it was not only students who crowded the already cluttered office of Albus Dumbledore. No fewer than three professors, the Groundskeeper, Mr. Filch, and the yellow-eyed cat Mrs. Norris were mulling about. Fawkes the phoenix had, wisely, chosen this moment to burst into flames. Somehow sensing the chaos, all the instruments stacked across shelves had likewise come to life, whirring and puffing, punctuating the general clamor with shrill and unrelenting voices of their own.

The Headmaster merely sat, looking placid, as Argus Filch and Sibyll Trelawney vied for his attention.

"Headmaster, I do think that unless we address these end of term hijinks with the appropriate measure of severity—"

"If you please, Argus, this is of far greater urgency than childish pranks—black, Headmaster—a black raven circled the school no fewer than three times—"

"Ah, Severus." Dumbledore stood, leaving both petitioners in a lurch. "So glad you could make it. Please, sit down." He gestured to the chair currently occupied by one of the Weasley twins; Snape could never tell them apart.

But he had no intention whatsoever of trying to push through the crowd and had already turned to leave.

"Severus, please do come in. I'm sorry, everyone, but I'm afraid Professor Snape and I have a most urgent matter to discuss, and you will all have to return at a later time…"

He snorted. Dumbledore seemed to realize that Snape was the only threat capable of clearing the room. He glided forward, sure to offer only unwelcoming glares. It was enough to disperse all but the most tenacious of solicitors.

"Headmaster—"

"I assure you, Argus, I trust the staff completely as far as the enforcement of punishment is concerned." He looked over his half-moon spectacles at the still seated defendant. "And I also trust that Mister Weasley has realized that he must keep a closer eye on his Blast-Ended Skrewts so they do not wander off into the clothing of unsuspecting first years. Isn't that so, Mister Weasley?"

The boy, who, judging from the large "G" now visible on the back of his sweater, must have been George, stood to attention with a salute. "Of course, Headmaster. Constant vigilance!"

"Yes, that will do, Mister Weasley, thank you." Argus Filch looked murderous, but Snape was sure he saw a smile ruffle the Headmaster's long beard.

"But Dumbledore—the raven!" Sibyll Trelawney's magnified eyes threatened to overtake her entire face.

"Yes, Sibyll, very worrisome, indeed. Please consult your crystal and keep me advised."

The Headmaster's confirmation of the grave situation seemed to satisfy her, and she dashed out in a whirl of gauze and bangles.

Dumbledore closed the door behind her with a sigh. He pressed his eyes closed for a moment, leaning on the jamb, clearly enjoying the absence of appealing voices. When he finally opened them again, they had resumed their usual, jovial twinkle. "Ahh, Severus. Today, you are my Slytherin angel."

"My pleasure," he growled, taking a seat and finding himself still painfully assaulted by the scent of perfume and sherry Sibyll Trelawney seemed to exude.

The Headmaster retook his place beside Fawkes, looking about with an expression of utmost peace. Despite the renewed brightness of his eyes, he was looking haggard.

"Coffee I think, yes?" He flicked his wand and a tray of refreshments appeared. "Cream? Sugar?"

"Black is fine."

"Of course."

They sipped in silence for a long while, and he found himself lost in thought as he stared at the now smoldering pile of ash where Fawkes had, moments before, been burning at full force.

He wondered if he'd ever be able to sit there, looking back at the Headmaster, without the barrage of memories. Without Potter and Black and Lupin looming over his shoulder, blurting excuses over one another while he sat, silent, stinging with repressed rage. Or without the simmering burn in the crook of his arm as the words spilled from his lips, _Ican'tdothisanymore. Idon'twantthis. _Or without the drops of blood dripping from his robes as he related, cold and detached, how they'd interrogated the witch until her pleas for death were finally satisfied.

No, those shades would always be lurking, in the corners, among the portraits and the whirring instruments, ready to pounce.

"Severus?" The Headmaster had leaned forward slightly, twinkling in his direction. Snape was certain Dumbledore knew what he was thinking—was inviting him back to the present. "Did you, in fact, have something you wished to discuss?"

"Yes. It's hardly urgent, but—"

"As long as it does not involve hanging Fred Weasley by his toenails or interpreting the flight paths of common English fowl, please do continue."

"_Fred_ Weasley?"

"Indeed. Rather amusing, though don't let Argus know I encourage that, mind."

But Snape never found Dumbledore's indulgence of Gryffindor pranking all that amusing; a fact which the Headmaster seemed to recall just as he said it. He cleared his throat quickly. "So, apart from Gryffindor justice, what's on your mind?"

Snape sat back, trying to decide how best to approach the subject. He was more than aware Dumbledore would not approve of his stopping the girl and would reprove him even more harshly for his impromptu use of Legilimency. It would be best to get to that bit of the story only when absolutely necessary. "Do you remember a student named Antigone Branch?"

He expected the Headmaster to think for a few moments, but the answer was immediate. "Yes, a Slytherin."

Snape could read volumes from the Headmaster's tone alone, quiet and solemn. "I did not remember hearing the name…"

"You wouldn't, I suppose. She left Hogwarts the year before you arrived."

_So that explains the solemnity._ " 'Left' Hogwarts? Can I assume then that she did not graduate?"

"No, she did not." He poured a copious amount of sugar into his cup and set a spoon to stirring it vigorously while he spoke. "She became pregnant the summer before her seventh year and did not return. She took up residence in Knockturn Alley until her death a few years—well, no, my, almost eleven years ago now."

Snape tabulated this mentally. The girl couldn't have been more than twenty; she would have been very young when her mother died. For that matter, the mother herself must have been quite young. "How did she die?"

Now Dumbledore himself sat back, spoon still stirring madly. "It was a subject of some debate. Well, not enough debate, in truth. The Ministry didn't concern itself too much with the case. It was at the fever pitch of Voldemort's grab for power and given what they considered the relatively unimportant position of the woman—"

"Unimportant position?" he interrupted, grabbing the incessant spoon and removing it from the overflowing cup himself.

"Oh, yes, sorry," the Headmaster mumbled, recovering the cup as if remembering himself. "Yes, Miss Branch unfortunately found herself in rather dire circumstances. At the time of her death, she'd been working for two years at the Scarlet Siren."

"Ahh," was all he could manage, praying suddenly that this was not the reason the girl looked familiar. He had been, in his more desperate youth, an occasional customer of that establishment. It was a well-known site, in fact, for a number of informal Death Eater gatherings, and it had been common gossip that the business' madam was a secret supporter of the Dark Lord.

"Yes. The death was recorded as a suicide, but no one will ever be certain. As I recall, they found that she'd ingested a rather large dose of Aceribus Serum."

He couldn't stop the sharp breath. He'd seen the effects of the poison on numerous occasions; small doses were often the Dark Lord's choice of—persuasion. A large dose—large enough to be fatal—would have been agonizingly painful and death would have taken several hours. It was hardly a practical choice for suicide.

He continued running through the faces of his companions from the Siren. He could not recall any named Antigone nor any reminiscent of the girl's features. "And…the child?"

"Yes, Messalina Branch." Dumbledore himself seemed to be running a picture reel through his mind. "She was not with her mother at that time. In fact, before her trial several years after, Madame Mew swore to me she had never been aware that any of her employees had children."

In spite of himself, he felt relieved by this. The Scarlet Siren would certainly not have been the place for a young girl. "And the father?"

"No one—or at least no one of whom I am aware—ever claimed paternity of Miss Branch." The Headmaster said this in such a way that Snape suspected he had his own theories on the subject. "And, in fact, I did not learn the whereabouts of the young Miss Branch until another few years later when her name came up on the Hogwarts roll."

He had been poised to question the Headmaster further about the girl's father, but this revelation caught him off guard. He glanced down at his half-empty cup, wishing it was something a bit stronger.

"The Hogwarts roll? She's—not been one of my students, I assume?" he attempted, producing a second cup and saucer, this time with his own slightly Irish blend. He would see, then, where the Headmaster's information led…

"No, indeed, she was not," Dumbledore said, smiling as if cataloging Snape's subtle reaction. After many years of such conversations they had both grown more adept at reading one another's mannerisms-- slight, barely noticeable signs of caution, of holding back, and the even slighter signals of emotion. Snape was quite sure that, at that moment of pause, Dumbledore had already begun to formulate several reasons for his interest in the subject. Unfortunately, this time, Snape was also fairly certain the Headmaster wouldn't be able to guess—nor likely to imagine—the precise set of circumstances that would throw his Potions Master into the path of one Messalina Branch.

"The young Miss Branch—or Miss Ross as she called herself then—did not attend Hogwarts," Dumbledore continued, adding another lump to his coffee. "When I saw her name come up on the list of prospective students, I, of course, felt the need to follow up on the letter personally to ensure its reception and to satisfy myself that the girl, whom most had assumed lost, did, in fact, find herself in bearable conditions."

Snape did not bother to hide his surprise. The Headmaster rarely performed this duty himself. He occasionally sent a staff member or the Gameskeeper to facilitate the enrollment of certain students who might face difficulties from caregivers or from lack of adequate wizarding knowledge. But the Headmaster himself, due to the seniority of his position, had only performed this function a handful of times since taking the job—at least to Snape's knowledge.

"I'll admit it was partially my own healthy curiosity as well. Curiosity coupled with a feeling of responsibility to the girl's mother, who, while not an outstanding student, could have, I feel, found her situation far different had _she_ finished her education here."

Now this, Snape said with nothing more than a nod, seemed closer to the truth. He could easily imagine the Headmaster doing almost anything out of a sense of duty and guilt.

"The address on her letter was in a Muggle town, so I paid the house a call as the time of enrollment approached. The Muggle couple there, a Mr. and Mrs. Ross, informed me, and quite kindly, that they had indeed received the notification but that their daughter would not be attending. The girl had, they said, been abandoned at their town's church at the age of six, and they had taken her in, unable to have any children of their own. They had enrolled the girl at the church school and did not feel that a school for witchcraft would be in her best interest, academically or spiritually."

Snape obliged the Headmaster with the sneer he was sure had been expected. It was not an uncommon occurrence to meet with this objection among Muggle parents. He himself did not know much about their dogma, but knew, as every Slytherin was taught from birth, that religious Muggles did not look kindly on witches and wizards. It was one of the facts that had led to the ancient Slytherin disgust—or perhaps mutual enmity—with anyone who came from a Muggle home.

"Though the couple assured me they had discussed the matter with Miss Branch as well, I felt inclined to speak with her myself," the Headmaster said, steepling his fingers, clearly remembering the encounter. "I was surprised to discover that she herself did not wish to attend, though her concerns were not spiritual in nature. She informed me that she was a Squib, and it was for that very reason that her mother had deserted her. I tried to disabuse her of the notion, telling her that only those with magical ability found themselves on the Hogwarts roll. However, she was quite adamant on the subject, and, I must say, from further discussions with her adopted parents, it didn't seem she'd shown any special propensity for magic, even when angry or afraid." He sighed deeply. "So, with neither her guardians' nor her interest, I was forced to remove her from the roll. I must say, I felt it might be a mistake, but—" He fell off, further thoughts drowned in what Snape could only imagine must be a very sucrose-crusted draw of coffee.

But there was no doubt what the Headmaster was thinking. They had never discussed it, but Snape had realized over time how deeply Albus Dumbledore felt the regret over every student lost, every student gone astray. He'd seen the same slow gaze, heard the same tinkle of pity in every conversation of Hogwarts alumni gone Death Eater and every current student following a path leading to ruin or devastation. Albus Dumbledore's Boggart, he'd often mused, would be not a threat to himself but a threat to his students. It would be those lost souls like Antigone Branch, Tom Riddle—himself, when young.

"Well, Severus," the Headmaster sighed again, peeking over half-moon spectacles, eyes sharp. "Now I've told you everything I know, why don't you tell me what _you_ know."

It didn't surprise him. He might have once been more than adept at hiding things from the Dark Lord, telling half-truths and manipulating conversation, but his skills were no match here—no match for the only one Voldemort had ever feared. "Well, if it sets your mind at ease somewhat, I ran into the young Miss Branch over the weekend. In Sutton Hill, near Spinner's End. She seemed to be doing better than her mother."

This was clearly not what the Headmaster had been expecting. Perhaps he had expected some revelation regarding the mother's death or some gossip amongst his old friend about her Hogwarts tryst.

"Did you? And what, pray tell, could have dragged you away from home fires and into town?"

A fair question. Beyond his reputation for avoiding all things Muggle, the Headmaster was well aware that on his occasional weekends away from school, Snape religiously cloistered himself at Spinner's End, away from all prying eyes—even Dumbledore's.

He shifted. "I was in need of some items most easily acquired at the market there." He did his best to avoid what he could tell was the Headmaster's amused smile. "The young Miss Branch happened to—run into me there."

"Did she. And you two struck up a friendly conversation, then?"

The sneer surfaced, unbidden. It was a familiar dance, Dumbledore pressing him closer and closer to the truth.

"Of sorts. She happened to catch of glimpse of my—arm, and as you know, for the last month I have found my Mark getting somewhat more pronounced." Dumbledore produced a sound of knowing anxiety. "Miss Branch was most—disconcerted to see it, as you can imagine. The reaction makes sense now, considering the company her dear mother must have kept."

"Indeed." But the Headmaster was clearly not about to let him shift the explanation yet. "And you came to discussing her mother by-- ?"

No, there was no wriggling free this time; he'd already been pinned by the twinkling. He almost regretted bringing the girl up in the first place. If it hadn't been for that vision—that deformed Mark—he might have even dropped the topic then and there. But the girl had been hiding something and desperately. If Dumbledore could rid him of that bit of worry, it would be worth a bit of unpleasant truth on his end.

"I was suspicious of her reaction and—" He paused, trying to judge his confessor's response, but the Headmaster's eyes remained impassive. "And I was apprehensive that someone might hear about my excursion among Muggles."

At least the Headmaster's slow nod indicated he, too, understood the danger such seemingly idle gossip could hold.

"I located her after leaving the market and asked her about the reaction," he said, affecting the same cold countenance he once had relating the activities of the mask and the hood. "She told me, as she told you, that she was a Squib. When I asked about her parents, she told me they were Slytherins. You'll understand, this made me even more uneasy—"

This time the nod was more reluctant.

"And, of course, I could tell she was hiding something. Very deliberately. So—I—"

The Headmaster sat back, approval stopped abruptly. "So you decided to find out for yourself," he finished, quiet.

"Yes."

There was a long silence, but Dumbledore did not attempt to fill this one with coffee or sugar or spoons. He was watching Snape closely, a study in gravity. Snape tried to imagine what words the Headmaster would say, which one of a handful of speeches he'd choose.

But the expected lecture did not come. Instead, Dumbledore took his usual perceptive leap. "You must have seen something of note, if you're talking to me."

"Yes—and no. But what I didn't see is, in itself, interesting."

The lack of answer did not discourage his continuing.

"I saw the Dark Mark," he pushed forward, seeing the strange image flash again across his mind. "It was floating on the very top of her consciousness, unsurprisingly after our encounter, I'll admit. However, it was unlike any Mark I've ever seen; it was incomplete, twisted. It was not something, I can imagine, came from the Dark Lord directly."

He couldn't be certain, but the Headmaster seemed to be considering this as if, somehow, trying to work it into the pieces of previous thoughts. Encouraged by the possibility of explanation, Snape continued. "And then, she stopped me."

Dumbledore's piece-fitting halted, eyes dashed suddenly up. "Occlumency?"

He nodded. It had been haphazard and ill-controlled, but it was, there could be no doubt, Occlumency. While the Headmaster appeared to be weighing this information, he examined the pieces himself. Her mother had been a Slytherin, and, it seemed likely, her father also. Her mother had continued to run in those dark circles until her suspicious death. The girl's father, it seemed hard to deny, then, must have been a Death Eater or, at the very least, a supporter of them. Many Slytherins at that time, too cowardly to commit to the Mark, had settled for channeling money and resources to the cause—and to young men, who, like himself were powerful but poor.

And the girl was hiding something, pretending to be a Squib, keeping her distance from the wizarding world. The steps didn't seem to follow. If she was simply afraid of her mother's likely killers, what was she hiding? And abandoning the wizarding world was extreme, especially considering that there hadn't been a Death Eater incident in almost a decade. Unless, there were more who, like Dumbledore, worried that it was only a matter of time until that changed…

And then the Mark. If her father had been one of the Fold, his Mark ought to have been whole. And her mother, well, Snape was well acquainted with the small number of the Dark Lord's female initiates, and Antigone Branch, from the sound of it, would never have made the cut. The female Death Eaters had been, as a rule, extremely powerful and ruthless witches—had to be to catch the Dark Lord's eye. The men could weasel their way into his services through various facets of utility; the women, on the other hand, were accepted only when they made him stronger.

That meant, as far as he could discern, that the mark was, most likely…the girl's.

And that threw any plausible explanations into a cocked hat.

"Did you have any suspicions as to the girl's father?" he asked at length, the Headmaster seemingly lost in the same spirals of thought.

Dumbledore looked up, and Snape could see only one thought on his mind: the only thought that ever quenched the twinkling. He had been thinking of Voldemort, of signs.

"I had my suspicions at the time," he said absently.

Snape expected something further, but the Headmaster merely flicked his wand, causing all the cups and spoons to pop out of existence.

"However, I think, given what you've told me—given what you saw—it might be wise to ask Miss Branch herself."

Snape grew very still.

"I must admit that I had, to some extent, forgotten her." He was now chastising himself. "My visit with her happened during the hustle and bustle of start of term, and, as I said, I thought—"

His slight voice was interrupted by the squeaking and stirring of a newly resurrected Fawkes. The bird's tiny scarlet head lifted wide-eyed from the ruins of its former self.

"Resurrection, return." His smile was wan. "Yes, I think we should pay Miss Branch a friendly call. Given what's apparently on her _mind_—" Snape didn't miss the harsh emphasis here, "—perhaps it would be best if we satisfied ourselves regarding her situation."

He felt a heavy tingling as the Headmaster's eyes shifted over him. " 'We'?"

"Yes, Severus. We."

"But, Albus, judging by her reaction—"

"Judging by her reaction she did not take kindly to your interrogation nor to your forcible entry into her thoughts."

He breathed in deep, feeling the familiar stony mask fit itself across his face. For some reason—Merlin only knew why—it was only the Headmaster's disapproval and judgment that seemed to penetrate his thick skin. That slow, tempered voice was the only one that could worm its way through the armor he'd forged over years and years of torment.

"So, I think it only just, Severus, that you locate Miss Branch's residence in Sutton Hill and accompany me there." Dumbledore had turned away, moving on, it appeared, to other business. "Perhaps you can help ease whatever worry you may have caused and—" He paused, meeting Snape's eyes gently. "—apologize."

That was almost more than he could bear, even from Dumbledore. He stood slowly, unable to suppress a derisive snort as he looked down his nose at the man now stooped over several pieces of parchment.

"Thank you, Severus. I am glad you told me."

But that was just it; it was Dumbledore. He couldn't argue or even let slip a single trademark barb. Not because he felt guilty or because he was afraid, but because the Headmaster, damn him, had a quiet, kind way of always being right. Talking to him, all Snape's carefully-styled Slytherin pragmatism seemed to collapse like a house of cards.

He found it utterly infuriating.

But he also knew that it was because of this that he would follow that man—that hooked nose old fool—even to his death.

"Once again, my _pleasure_, Headmaster." He turned to leave.

"Oh, and Severus--?"

He arched an eyebrow but did not turn.

"The unauthorized use of Legilimency is illegal, you know." A tone that could have been severe was, unexpectedly, playful. "So, you see, my indulgences are not _always_ reserved for Godric's crowd…"

This earned the Headmaster nothing more than a deeper frown as he slammed the door.

* * *

**A/N:**

Thank you to whitehound for the Brit-picks of Chapter 1. I, luckily, have never had occasion to find out the color of scrubs in Britain. I did, however, remember the lack of air-conditioning (being from Texas, that sort of thing doesn't escape notice). That's why Snape simply "didn't know" how Muggles cooled their domiciles.

As for mace being illegal, I suppose Lina is just the crafty, paranoid sort who'd smuggle some somehow…

Just to clear up any confusion: the flashbacks all occur immediately _pre_ Philosopher's Stone (1991)—the summer before Harry's first year at Hogwarts.

Thanks, and please let me know what you think!


	3. A Thousand Thousand Slimy Things

**_Chapter Three:_ A Thousand Thousand Slimy Things**

_May, 1991_

Whatever anonymity Snape might once have enjoyed in the town of Sutton Hill was now dying a slow and humiliating death. With every step they took from Spinner's End, his frown etched deeper and lower across his face, his eyes turned resolutely to the pavement. He was vaguely aware of the twisting heads, the raised eyebrows, the small noses of children pressed flat against he inside of store front windows. One teenager with bold shocks of upended pink hair had even gone so far as to hoot and whistle after them before dissolving into spasms of laughter.

They were barely halfway to their destination, No. 8C Kingsfoil Row, when he made the decision. No—it was more a personal vow, really. He was never _ever_ going to bother wearing Muggle clothes again.

Dumbledore had fashioned fitting attire for their excursion through Sutton Hill: fitting, that is, in that all pieces were the correct size. He had never, however, seen a Muggle wear the precise shade of screeching yellow the Headmaster had chosen, nor had he noticed, in his few Muggle outings, that the mandarin-collared waistcoat was a particularly popular choice.

He'd practically begged the Headmaster to simply apparate to the girl's building—or as close as he allowed himself to come to "begging." But the Headmaster insisted that apparition would be both rude and conspicuous, and that the fresh air would do him some good.

_Yes, wonders._ His mood had improved ever so much.

He glared down at a young boy who appeared dangerously close to dropping his ice cream cone for staring.

Yes, he truly loved getting out in the world, feeling the oppressive sun wet his already greasy hair with sweat and burn the pale protuberance of his nose like an overcooked wad of dough.

Besides, if _this_ was being inconspicuous, wearing his full set of robes could only be described as "pure stealth."

"Left," he growled, directing the glowing ball of the Headmaster around a corner.

Luckily, most of these ridiculous stares were directed at Dumbledore, who had the sense to conjure his Potions Master something less—_chic._ Nonetheless, Snape simply didn't feel—clothed. The color, the materials were the same, but the substance was all wrong. He'd grown more than accustomed to his pitch linen robes: they'd become an extension of himself. He knew just how to move—just how to bend an arm or shift a foot—to send the folds billowing. A second skin that flowed graceful yet unnerving at once.

It was, he'd realized, nigh impossible to achieve any air of intimidation in a black, button-up dress shirt and khakis cut just at the ankle.

"This one," he said at last, scowling magnificently up at what was surely the most unassuming brown box of a building he'd ever seen. The window sills were uncertain lines, and the doors seemed set, nonchalant, atop three steps that begged to be considered nothing more than sufficient. The rusted orange letters marked the address in the dullest whisper. It was the sort of building that resolutely refused to be noticed.

The Headmaster eyed the front door a moment, as if trying to puzzle it out. In truth, Snape had seen Muggles work these systems before, pressing a small button to speak with the flat's owner and release the lock. But he was in no mood to have their arrival announced and anything but eager to confirm that the occupant was, in fact, home.

Unconcerned with betraying his absolute disregard for their pathetic attempt at "blending in," he removed his want, and the door gave way with an apathetic creak. If Dumbledore disapproved, he said nothing, merely pushing his way into the narrow, upward-snaking stairway beyond.

Snape didn't miss the small label taped hastily beside button 8C, scrawled in meticulous yet sweeping green ink. _Lina Ross_.

It was the same name he'd located the Muggle listing book, after an unsurprisingly failed attempt to locate a Messalina Branch in the county. This was definitely a woman who didn't want to be found. She'd chosen a name that blended, a building that blended in a town that, had his father not grown up in, Snape would never have given a second look.

Just the sort of town that would spawn a sponge-brained ape like Tobias Snape, he growled to himself, gliding up between the tortuous, uneven hands of the hallway. Drab and dull with an almost sadistic insistence of normality.

"Good day, madam!" the Headmaster offered, cordially tipping his lemon-colored bowler hat at the curler-headed woman who apparently resided in 8B. The lumpy gray mess of her head along with its wide, bifocaled eyes had poked out as they passed, releasing the unmistakable musk of cats into he hallway. She didn't return the greeting, content to merely watch them through slit eyes with intensely magnified distrust. He gave her his own greeting: a superior glare down the expanse of his nose. The door slammed, quick.

"Ahh, at last. I feared we'd hit the clouds first."

Snape looked back down the stairway which rolled like a tongue in tight, manic turns to the closed mouth of the entrance far below. So she'd locked herself away in a tower, as well: how _charming_.

"Yes, well, at least here the stairs stay put," Dumbledore sighed, straightening his hat and taking the parcel Snape had carried all the way from Spinner's End into his gnarled hands. When questioned as to the contents of the sack, the Headmaster merely replied that it was the height of good manners to bring a small gift along for a social call. Snape couldn't begin to guess what was really in the sack; but it wasn't just a few boxes of Bertie Bott's or a lovely arrangement of nightviolets from Famous Flora's. The sack was heavy—another fact he'd registered with every step through town—and, by the way the Headmaster's blue eyes twinkled when questioned, it was certainly something that would prove…meaningful.

"Now, let me see. I saw a Muggle do this once…" The Headmaster beat a complex and wild rhythm on the door, rattling it on its brass hinges before looking back at Snape, excessively diverted.

He sighed, and, leaning forward, pressed the bell with a long impatient finger. _Well, at least one of us is enjoying himself…_

A long pause followed, and while he gave way to a moment's hope that the occupant was, in fact, not home, the eventual muting of the obnoxious music within and the unmistakable sound of shuffling behind the door disabused him with almost violent quickness. Shades of movement slid across the transparent eye of the peephole, and he could imagine her quibbling, wide-eyed, at the yellow man magnified and warped against her sight.

No fewer than three locks clicked loose before the door swung open. He slid carefully along with it and out of immediate sight. No sense in seeing the door slammed directly on the old man's amiably arranged face.

"Headmaster." Cautious greeting. "What a—surprise."

But, he noted from out of view, she certainly didn't _seem_ surprised. Not enough for seeing the old man again after nine long years. Her voice, while slow and calculated, was far more certain than on their previous encounter, almost to the point of being unrecognizable. For a moment, he wondered if it was even her or if perhaps she had a flatmate.

"Good day, Miss Branch—or is it Miss Ross?"

Interesting which she'd choose: wizarding or Muggle name. Would this be a conversation between witch and wizard or between a Muggle woman and some quite awkwardly-dressed callers?

"Lina will do just fine, Headmaster."

Neither. How very—calculated.

"Of course, Lina," Dumbledore replied, removing his hat politely. "And I believe you've already met Professor Snape--?"

It was precisely at moments like this that he especially enjoyed his close relationship with those black robes. He would have slid into view, billowing like an overgrown bat, with that indefinable aura that brooked no tedious niceties. As it was, he merely stepped, more awkwardly than he'd planned, past the comforting mask of the door, trying to balance his features between the disdain he was feeling and the affability he was sure Dumbledore expected.

Her face, like her voice, was markedly different than what had been playing back in his mind's eye: less skittish mouse, more coiled serpent. The flat brown hair that had hidden her reluctant features was pulled back, revealing a leaner, keener look. Those gray eyes that had slipped from his with such tenacity were now trained, impassive, on his. He could almost believe, on this encounter, that her parents had been Slytherins. He'd recognize that summoned courage anywhere: not the blustering, fiery Gryffindor courage, but the lazy, cool brand which defined Salazaar's house so completely.

"Yes, but I don't believe the _Professor_ and I were properly introduced."

And a Slytherin response. He had to admire, however grudgingly, that perfect, laconic lilt.

Not the same woman at all: this was a witch. The frown of her lips and the slight relaxation in the curve of her shoulders convinced him that, no matter what she said of surprise, she'd, somehow, expected their call.

"Ah, well, then. This is Professor Severus Snape, my Potions Master at Hogwarts. And, Severus, this is indeed Miss Messalina Branch—or Ross, as the lady prefers." He glanced between the two of them with that seemingly oblivious smile that many took for foolishness. In fact, as Snape was now aware, it was only a sign of the Headmaster's imperturbable power. Dumbldore never missed a thing: it simply took a great deal—certainly more than a couple of taciturn Slytherins scowling at one another—to provoke even the smallest hint of frustration.

"Pleasure to meet you again, Professor," she drawled, turning back to the Headmaster as if Snape was nothing more than a fixture of the hallway. "Is there something I can do for you?"

She remained lodged, firm, in the doorway.

"Er, might we come in? I was rather hoping we could have a chat."

Pale eyes whipped back at him, cracking across his face knowingly. He ignored them, wondering how in the world Dumbledore would get her to talk. Most witches and wizards opened up to the Headmaster almost reflexively: in fact a good number of them were regularly vying for his ear. That implicit air of trust and wisdom about him could only be compared to a mild dose of Veritaserum. The most tight-lipped and wayward of Slytherins often cracked under those twinkling eyes, if, for no other reason than the utter shock of a look so warm yet so objective. It had even worked on him, once upon a time.

But, judging from the glare she was throwing his way and the very slow, reluctant movement of her arm from the door frame, he wondered if even the Headmaster would be able to tease the truth from those lips.

She conceded after a long pause, simply turning back into the flat and leaving Snape to close the door behind himself.

The room was bathed in sunlight filtered through the strainer of blinds. Tiny specks of dust danced through the rays lazily, drifting in all directions like tiny sleepwalkers. Despite, however, the light and open windows, the entire room felt choked, cluttered. It was the opposite of the plain, bland building at Number 10 Kingsfoil: chaotic, eccentric, and—he turned around to confirm the observation—absolutely filled with junk.

Most of the junk fell into one of two categories, the first being boxes. All manner of boxes littered the floor: tall and thin, long and wide, tiny and deep. Some were half open, cardboard tongues lolling out obscenely. Others were positively draped in packing tape, closed so tight he didn't know how she'd ever open them again.

The second and more ubiquitous item—so ubiquitous that, in fact, it gave the impression of actually being the theme of the décor—was books. He considered his small library at Spinner's End to be more than adequate for any but the most academic needs. But this was not academic: it verged on obsessive. Bookshelves covered every inch of wall space save one cramped spot reserved for the smoky gray of what he eventually recognized as a foeglass.

Every bookshelf was, in itself, another microcosm of confusion, each packed tighter than should have been possible, row upon row weaving over one another, defying all notions of space and order. Those that didn't fit on the shelves were stacked, with no apparent logic, in any available space about the room. The air of the flat was thick with the heady musk of paper and oilcloth, and, for a moment, he almost forgot his displeasure at the sunlight and the dust and company, transported to some of this best memories at Mister Hawkins'.

"I hope we've not come at an…inconvenient time?" Dumbledore said, having some difficulty navigating the maze of boxes to an unoffered seat on the sofa.

"No, not really. I was just doing a little packing. Trying to get out by the end of June or July." She'd resigned herself to the armchair across from the Headmaster and was watching Snape like a hawk.

Ahh. She doesn't like the way the neighborhood is going… 

"Well, then, it is most fortunate that we found you here in time."

And headlong they plunged into a stretched, evaluating silence. Dumbledore watched her, she watched Snape, and Snape, still standing awkwardly behind the couch, stared at the bookcase nearest him, scanning the exposed spines methodically. _Transfiguration and Ethics, Resmiranda Marshall. Wizard Geneaology in the 1600's, Septimius Mercer. Life After Crucio, Julius Winchester._

If sunlight made noise, they would have heard it.

_The Wereworld and Its Symptomology, Romulus Falstaff. Unicorn's Blood: the Abom—_

"Would you like some tea?" the Head master offered abruptly, as if, somehow, they were all sitting in his office at Hogwarts, discussing a student or a lesson. "I find its really quite useful in these situations: plenty of things to do with your hands, plenty of things to stir and measure."

The girl's smile was slight but natural, the first hint of a lessened guard. It gave her cold features yet another unfamiliar facet.

He found that, often, this was a facet he never saw in people. Fear and repulsion—and anger, on occasion: but he rarely got to see unguarded, genuine amusement. It made him—uncomfortable.

"Yes, sorry, of course. But, if you don't mind, I'll get it. I can't stand that conjured stuff."

She gave him a hard look before disappearing into the kitchen. It said nothing more or less than, _Sit down and keep your hands off _everything.

Which of course he had no intention of heeding. The many shelves of magic texts had already piqued his curiosity at the mystery of the supposed Squib, and, as soon as she was out of sight, his feet started him on a circuit about the room, searching.

Almost without thinking, he gravitated to the foeglass hung haphazard between the imposing mass of bookshelves. Its surface remained blank and placid even as he leaned in, most almost tickling the dusty silver. That should convince her at least. Perhaps he didn't need to bother with an apology after all. Just a, See? No harm, no foul.

As he leaned in, a box beneath the foeglass whispered with movement. The lid yawned wide, and it swelled, almost bursting along the seems from the collection of bric-a-brac within. He nudged the lid open completely with a brief, cardboard sigh.

A small lamp. An end table-sized replica of Gladys Steerpike's famous sculpture, _Morgana at Rest_. several pots he could tell from smell alone had once held herbs.

And one leather-bound corner peeking up amidst the chaos: a notebook with the small gold-lettered proclamation of "Photos."

Most of the photographs inside were as dull as the rest of the box's contents: unmoving Muggles scenes of beaches and monuments and the girl at various ages and various stages of gawkiness. Two pictures, however, tucked inconspicuously between scenes of a family holiday in Rome, moved with alacrity, appearing to spin amidst the sea of static smiles.

The first was at Hogwarts, and, more specifically, he recognized quickly, the Slytherin common room. A witch lay sprawled across the serpent-carved arms of a chair, looking bored in a stylist way and waving out at him with one long, dark hand. She was exceedingly attractive: thin and smooth-skinned with particularly piercing amber eyes. Her lean, tanned shoulders were bared with calculated allure, allowing long chestnut plaits to dust down them and nestle her generous bosom. Her ankles bounced, bare, supple feet curling and stretching, languid.

The second photo confirmed his guess as to the witch's identity. The same tanned woman stared out at him, hands clasped behind her back, the dingy, lean-to shop fronts of Knockturn Alley as a backdrop. She looked only very slightly older, Hogwarts robes absent and plaited hair now straight and sober at the base of her neck.

And, at the woman's hip, a young girl concentrating fiercely on a Lizard Lolly, tasting it repeatedly while ignoring both the woman and the observer completely.

So _that_ was Antigone Branch, standing beside her young daughter, pointedly _not_ smiling.

She appeared familiar now, through a haze, and he knew at once he must have seen her, in passing, during her companioning years.

_Yes, those honey-colored eyes…_

But he had never, thank Merlin, enjoyed her services. His tastes ran in a different direction, fairer and brighter. He could certainly think of a few Death Eaters, though, who might have hemorrhaged Galleons for a night in that witch's chamber d'amour. Perhaps he'd be able to puzzle this out after all…

"Severus, I admire your initiative, but I am not currently in need of your investigative services."

He replaced the album, feeling the Headmaster's reproving gaze.

"Sit down, for Godric's sake."

The sofa seemed to radiate unpleasantly, the intensity of the filtered sunlight only brightened by Dumbledore's neon garbs. He sighed, sure that he could work out the girl's father with just a few moments more searching. However, he was in no mood to be forced into apologizing for any further violations, and so stalked through the light, resting, uncomfortable, beside the Headmaster. He returned in sullen silence to the myriad spines eying him from a tall pile of books at his arm.

_A History of Houselves, Gwendolina Gompett. Curse Classes of the East, Yiling Zhang. Unfogging the Future, Miranda_

"Here we are." She'd reappeared, laying a plain porcelain tea service on the table between them. Tiny, flaky biscuits formed a feeble pyramid in the dusty river of sun.

"Lovely, thank you," the Headmaster replied, offering Snape an unsweetened, steaming cup.

It was without a doubt the worst tea a human being had ever imbibed.

The weakness of the taste was surpassed only by the scalding heat that ensured he wouldn't have to taste it—or anything else for the next few weeks. He forced himself to swallow, feeling the substance he refused to recognize as tea burn its way down his throat to a boil in his stomach.

He replaced the cup on the table resolutely with no attempt to mask his disgust.

"It's green tea," she said, contempt oozing from every dipthong and vowel. "If you don't approve, I'm sure I could find you something else…?"

He didn't meet her eyes. "Don't bother."

She didn't reply, merely taking Dumbledore's suggestion and busying herself with the _alleged_ tea. Cool milk quenched the cup's rising steam. "Well, now that we've plenty of things to stir: what can I do for you, Headmaster?"

"Albus, please. You're not a student."

"Indeed."

"As I said, I thought it was about time for a chat." He began, roundabout, apparently having no similar objections to the tea which he sipped at with vigor. "It has been a while, and I should have come by to do this long ago, but your adopted parents seemed eager to keep you away from us, and, at the time, we had—"

"You had problems of your own," she interrupted quickly.

He could tell, from the heavy slowness in her eyes, that the young woman did not want to risk any discussion of the Dark Lord.

"Yes, but that is no excuse. When Severus told me of encountering you here, I felt perhaps it was time to remedy the oversight."

No response.

The Headmaster's twinkling froze as he set his cup down, an empty porcelain eye rimmed with shadow. "I—have you heard about your mother?"

He watched close but again saw no hint of surprise—just the briefest flicker of grief in the line of her frowning lips. "Yes. I heard shortly after…it happened." Her voice was as hollow as the cup set between them.

"I'm very sorry for your loss. I should have come to tell you myself."

In the intervening silence, he suppressed the urge to groan. The Headmaster seemed to have no intention of asking _how_ she'd heard about it: it was unlikely that anyone from the Ministry would have known how to contact her. Logic dictated, then, that she'd heard it from some unknown contact in the wizarding world, possibly her father. These things, he'd thought, were the sort of answers they ought to be pursuing. But he held his tongue, trusting that Dumbledore would get there in his own measured, infuriatingly tactful way.

"Well, it was hardly a surprise. My mother talked about killing herself all the time."

Flattened words again, leaving him with the unassailable impression that not only was this assertion true but that she also knew her mother's death had likely not been a suicide.

She ended the statement, however, with the fullest of stops and did not seem eager to pick up the subject again. She tipped the teapot absently over Dumbledore's cup, steam renewing its sinuous curls through the thick air.

"I've brought you something. It took me a few days to track everything down, but the Ministry had kept them faithfully stored away," Dumbledore said, hefting the sack into his yellow lap. "They were your mother's possessions at the time of her death."

And there it was: the first genuine appearance of surprise. Suddenly fire-eyed and eager, she reached out to take the bag, pulling it open and upending it on the table without so much as a word. Her pale hands trembled as she turned the contents over and over, separating and—yes, she was searching.

Most of the bag's contents seemed of little consequence. A few hair ornaments, odd, stiletto shoes, a tarnished silver locket, an apparition license, a handful of sickles and knuts, a pair of rose-tinted spectacles, and some tattered issues of _Witch Weekly_.

But the girl kept ferreting through layer upon layer of junk as if expecting to find a million Galleons tucked away. She abandoned the hunt only when she'd turned over almost every itme twice.

"This is—everything?"

Dumbledore watched her with as much fascination and probing as she afforded the items. "Yes. Everything she had. Is something missing—in particular?"

"No—no." She sat back, biting her lip, leaving the knick-knacks strewn across the table, spilling over into the tea service. "It's just—there's so little of it."

_Liar_, he heard himself almost whispering again. She must be particularly unskilled at fibbing when flustered. How lamentably un-Slytherin.

But once again, Dumbledore did not press her. How lamentably Gryffindor…

Merlin's teeth, they'd be there all day at that rate. He turned away to hide the scowl, lazily resting his eyes on the bookshelves until something of note might occur.

For a supposed Squib who seemed to have known they'd be calling, she certainly hadn't gone to any trouble to hide the volumes of wizarding texts sprinkled amongst the Muggle ones. _Grindewald's Reign and Fall, Winston Scoresby. 1001 Potions for What Ails You, Eleanor Pringle. What Lies in the Cards, Alexandria Le_

"I thought _this_ might interest you." The Headmaster was clinking through the jumble of items, and he turned back. He wasn't sure what he heard in that tone, but he knew it was calling for his attention as much as hers. He'd rolled a thin piece of wood from under the edge of the tea tray and had extended it to the girl. "I believe it must have been your wand…?"

_Aha. That sly bastard _was_ really getting somewhere._

It was thin and dark—possibly ebony. It looked hard and unused, thick handle carved elaborately: a serpent coiled about the horn of a unicorn, both framing a crest he couldn't make out from his angle. Judging by the workmanship and the intricacy of detail, it must have been quite expensive—a custom job. Only the most affluent pureblood wizards had those sorts of wands made and usually only to mark special occasions like graduation, promotion, or marriage. Wandmakers like Ollivander required a good deal of monetary persuasion to take on a project like that. He doubted a Squib with a tart mother would merit the effort.

She snatched it from Dumbledore's hand with frantic speed. Their eyes were locked, blue and gray, and for some reason, the image of the serpent and unicorn suddenly seemed all too apt.

She tossed the wand out of sight, into the nearest open box.

"I assumed it was yours as they found your mother's on her body, snapped in two."

The sneer that bled across her face sent a chill through the roiling, tea-filled pit of his stomach. She'd sat back and was appraising the Headmaster differently now: sizing up the field.

"You would be correct," she replied, arm drawn under herself, supported on the chair. "My mother bought it for me when I was young. I suppose she hoped that with a wand—and a ludicrously expensive one at that—her hopeless Squib of a daughter would suddenly transform into Circe herself." The sneer melted. "She was mistaken."

"Was she?"

"Yes, Headmaster."

"Albus, please."

"Yes, Albus. As I believe we discussed the last time you were so good as to call."

Words had flown like javelins for a brief span, and he allowed himself to hope that Dumbledore had at last begun pushing forward for answers. But, of course, that manner of interrogation was far too harsh, far too unsettling for an old Gryff like the Headmaster, and the conversation fell, screechingly, into its previous pace, gentle and slow as the dust trekking down the sun rays.

_Let the dirty work fall to me, Albus. You always do_. And he readied himself, drawing his torso up to its full height.

"You have a good number of magical texts for a Squib who's cut herself off from the wizarding world." His voice was strident, far moreso than he'd dialed up, and the baritone seemed to clash magnificently with the décor. What could he say: somehow, she—and her damned situation—brought it out in him.

He'd expected some reproach from Dumbledore, but the old wizard merely sat facing her, measuring the thick silence in sips of tea. _One. Two. Three._

"I have a flair for the melodramatic, Professor. I enjoy marinating in the tragedy of my circumstances." Eyes perfectly—insanely—cold. "I learned it from my mum."

"And did _she_ teach you about the Dark Mark as well? Or perhaps that was your—"

"Severus—"

"No, please, Albus." Her glass, half-full, dripped green-white as she set it down, hard. She stood, and now, with the full force of whatever lurked behind the steely, guarded gaze, she was ready to play, to see what path they were taking inwards, towards her secrets. Again he recognized that look, controlled yet fierce impatience: another Slytherin staple, and beyond that, he'd seen it before, elsewhere…

But she turned away too quickly, and, when the eyes returned, they were freshly composed, matter of fact. She was holding the wand once again.

"I think I see where this is going, _sir_, and I think I can save us all a good deal of time right here and now."

And suddenly, he was staring down the end of her wand.

He hesitated, shocked. His wand was not in its usual place, his legs were crossed, awkwardly, and her lips, pale and tight, were already moving. _Too late…_

"Wingardium leviosa!"

Nothing happened.

Nothing except, of course, that she was now also staring, unmoved, down the long expanse of _his _wand as well.

But he did not respond.

The annunciation had been perfect, the motion flawless. By all accounts, he should be floating as aimless as the dust, looking down at the scene like the mockery of a cherub.

But nothing had happened. And that, he was afraid, could only mean one mind-boggling thing.

She tossed the wand aside again, retaking her seat as if he didn't' exist, standing taut with rage and surprise, wand still aimed firmly between her eyes.

"Severus, please. Sit back down."

Muscles obeyed without the mind's consent. His mind was too busy elsewhere.

She really _was _a Squib. Had to be. With any kind of a focus and the correct incantation and movement, _something _should have happened. Something _should_ have happened. Especially with such an elementary spell.

But she had just stood there, like a child with a toy too adult, impotent and harmless.

No sense. Just as he'd thought himself closer to ridding it out—she went and did _nothing_.

"So, I hope that assuages any doubts you might have had, Albus." Her tongue typed, typewriter objective against her teeth. "Because, believe me: if I could have hexed the dear Professor here, I would have."

Dumbledore, quiet, had stopped sipping.

"And, as for…the Dark Mark. I think we can all agree I'm not the only one who might not wish to be buying toothpaste next to a patron with that particular insignia."

The nod was slow. Dumbledore was clearly as befuddled as he.

"And now, I think it's time for you to leave. Unless of course you have anymore hoops for me to jump through--?"

The careful movement of the Headmaster's hand as it separated the sunlight and rested light on Messalina Branch's white hands was unlike any response Snape could have envisioned. It was that gentle twinkling made tactile. He had never seen Dumbledore reaching out: people quite often reached for him, for his comfort or consolation. But the Headmaster had a way of judging what people needed, despite what they said.

It was things like _that_ that made Snape feel guilty.

And apparently, she was not immune herself. She did not jump, but the cold fire in her eyes guttered.

"I am sorry, Lina—I am. We did not come here—we ought not to have come—to disturb you. I am aware that you have been through a great deal: I am aware your encounter with Professor Snape was—unpleasant. I am aware that your relationship with the wizarding world as a whole has been so. It was no our intention to confront you with it." There was no pity in the voice: she would have, like any good Slytherin, spurned it. The Headmaster's words weighed as nothing more or less than the truth.

Her eyes were mirrors for a moment, and he spied the same turning calm, the same gnawing guilt that he felt when Dumbledore's voice became so strong and right.

"I brought Severus along to assure you that he is most certainly in my confidence and most certainly _not_ a threat to you. Or anyone else, for that matter."

In the only way he knew how to apologize, Snape nodded, silent.

"I am sorry it has taken all these years for me to see to this meeting and to ask you this question. But, Lina, all I really want to know is: are you doing well?"

He fought the urge to sneer very, very hard. Everyone in the room knew the Headmaster wanted to know a good deal more than that: everyone _knew_ the girl must be hiding something.

But that Gryffindor honor wouldn't allow him to press forward through discomfort or tragedy, to upset the girl's tenacious sense of privacy. Being Slytherin made things so much more efficient—so much more expedient.

And so very much dirtier. At least, occasionally, when he deferred to Dumbledore's methods, he almost felt, for brief moments, like had done something Right. Not right, perhaps—but Right.

The girl was almost hunched now, staring at the Headmaster's gnarled hand on hers. "I'm fine, Albus. Thank you. Just a little—uncomfortable—with the past being thrown in my face."

_Bravo_, he heard the sarcastic silk echoing through the quiet of his brain. Her flat, whispery voice—like a victim of Veritaserum—was emotionless and unreadable. But he wasn't buying that impression of maudlin candor. It just didn't add up.

But Dumbledore withdrew his hand and stood, light bouncing manic across his yellow coat. That was enough for him, after all, Snape realized as he watched the Headmaster replace his bowler hat with a bit more joviality than expected. "I'm glad to hear it, Lina. You've set my mind at ease."

She matched his stance, recovering the keen, cautious length of her limbs.

"Is there anything else I can do for you? Aside, of course, from keeping my admittedly crooked nose out of your affairs?" He did that sometimes, anticipating a Slytherin barb like a Keeper with a Quaffle. It drove Snape mad.

The self-effacing smile she produced was one he had grown far too old to manage in the Headmaster's presence. He stood, collar and pants shifting in the unfamiliar way that made him all the more eager to be back at Hogwarts, back in his quarters. He was no closer to an answer than when they'd arrived: if anything, he was further away, and had nothing to show for his time other than a gnawing headache and a numb, swollen tongue. He was beginning to tire of this mystery now: leave Dumbledore to puzzle it out if necessary.

"Well, actually…"

"Yes, my dear?"

Somehow, he could feel her glance on his turned back.

"I have a strong tendency toward migraine headaches—"

Steps frozen, torso skewered by a golden ray. It was the chill of spying a dagger hidden in your enemy's cloak.

"Muggles have no cure for them, and I haven't the ability to brew the Mixture myself, obviously."

_Obviously_. Oh sweet Salazaar…

He turned again, determined to stop this before even allowing his mind to begin working out why in the world she would do this.

"Ahh. And you do not take owlpost here, I assume?"

Damn that amused hint in Dumbledore's voice. Damn what he was about to do…

"My landlady is rather unforgiving on the issue."

He tried to stare past the detached look she had thrown his way. Why in the wizarding world would she do this? What purpose could another one of these barely civil riddling sessions serve for her? She wriggled away from the Headmaster: why pursue it further?

Dumbledore knew better than to look his way. "Well, as it happens, Severus here has just finished brewing a batch of Migraine Mixtures himself. I'm sure he'd be good enough to deliver a supply to you if you'd like."

No attempt to hide his indignant snort at the word "good."

"That would indeed by very—_good_—of him," she returned, pressing the four letter further into the wound. If the girl had been scared of him, she wasn't scared _enough_. She'd be lucky if his hand didn't slip in the bottling process: a little Veritaserum would speed up this ridiculous game of cat and mouse quite handily.

"That is, of course, on the provision that he does not call again. _Ever_." A quirked half-grin.

"Miss Branch, no provision could give me greater pleasure."

The Headmaster's slap on the back was the most farcical gesture yet. "Marvelous. Severus is a first rate potioner. I think it should round out this matter rather—justly."

And now the girl had everything she wanted—he could tell by the lightened cadence of her steps—she strode, eager, to the door.

As she brushed past him, pulling the door open in a yawn, the gray of her eyes groped him, close, tracing every movement and shadow of his face. He could have sworn she was mocking him, offering those windows so freely as if to say, It's all here, tucked away behind my gaze. Too bad your master has you on such a short leash.

Or perhaps that was his own brain, projecting onto her.

It didn't stop him, however, from giving her a look that resolutely replied: _Sod off_.

"Well, Lina. I'm glad to see you again. I assure you I'm at your disposal if ever there's anything you wish to—discuss."

And the Headmaster's gaze twinkled, ever so briefly, down the girl's sleeved left arm.

He didn't miss it, and he could tell from the sudden collapse of that ease of step, that she had too.

At least _that_ wiped the satisfied look off her face. Dumbledore wasn't as easily fooled as she'd apparently assumed. "Thank—thank you, Albus," she said, eyes not daring to approach his this time.

And they were left staring, suddenly, at the wooden lines of the door. It was quiet enough to hear the mewing of cats from the next flat.

He expected the Headmaster to say something almost immediately. Not to apologize for that little ad hoc duty of course, but to at least begin theorizing, breaking down observations, asking him what he'd thought as they unwound there way from the building. He was used to acting as Dumbledore's sounding board, a cynical, pragmatic voice that could work through aspects the Headmaster's straightforward and honest mind, as formidable as it was, could not.

On this occasion, however, he remained frustratingly silent, weaving down the stairs with a speed most would not have guessed possible for a man far past the century mark. This could only mean, Snape mused, that the Headmaster still had no theories worth sounding out. Unsurprising, since it had been nothing more than a colossal waste of time. And his tongue.

Still, he would have preferred to hear something from Dumbledore. Any explanation he could offer: for the magical texts, possible means of blocking magical ability. Why in the world the girl could possibly want him of all people to return.

"I'll take those Mixtures tomorrow afternoon," he attempted as they reemerged into the street, sunlight now much heavier, much harder.

"Yes, thank you, Severus. I think it must be important for you to return: she certainly has something she'll say only to you."

He snorted, this time oblivious to the turned heads and appraising stares that trailed them back toward Spinner's End. "Indeed. Strange to invite me back, alone, when she seemed so—unenthusiastic—about my presence."

More silence. No discussion on that topic…

"She was rather strange on this encounter: different than at the market. Almost—believably Slytherin," he tried again.

The smallest and briefest of smiles ruffled the Headmaster's determined face. "Yes. She reminds me very much of her mother. Certain mannerisms."

He considered, measuring it against the pictures of the elder Branch. They certainly weren't strikingly similar in appearance. The girl was not as feminine nor as attractive, and her whole person was reminiscent of ice rather than honey: cold, colorless eyes set in pale skin. But he could see the alternately lazy and stern movement in both, and, despite stark difference in hue, the gazes of mother and daughter did match—heavy stares like unmoving stone. It reminded him of someone else. _Who…_

"She did not, luckily, seem to share much—apart from the odd genetic gift, of course—with her father. That, at least, is somewhat—"

"Her father?" he'd halted, mid-step, causing a thin woman and her tiny dog to stumble acrobatically into the street. So _that_ was Dumbledore's game: stringing him along, seeing what he'd caught…

"Your suspicions were confirmed, then?"

The Headmaster, realizing he'd lost his audience, doubled back and took Snape by the arm, leading him down a narrow, empty alley. "Yes, I believe so."

He swallowed the impatience, allowing himself to be led physically and conversationally. Above all, this was the answer he needed. Once he knew the father's identity, he could learn the rest for himself: over bourbon, over scotch, with his old—friends.

The Headmaster was twinkling again: it was, he had pieced together, some mature version of Gryffindor mischief, enjoying the suspense.

"_And_? Who is it?"

"Did you see Miss Branch's wand?" Dumbledore said, pulling his own wand out in preparation, Snape realized with relief, to apparate. _Some small mercy at least._

"Yes, an expensive one. Unicorn and serpent. Must have been a custom job."

"Correct. It must have been made _for_ the girl, an expense, as you might have surmised, Antigone Branch could not afford."

"Yes, yes. The father must have financed it, that I could have guessed, but—"

"And did you happen to see the crest on the wand?" Dumbledore continued, removing his hat and wiping at his brow.

Snape refused to dignify this ridiculous not to mention cruel exercise with a response. The fact that the father was wealthy did not narrow the field overmuch. Most of the old wizarding families that had fallen in with the Dark Lord were.

"It contained the girl's initials," the Headmaster conceded, no doubt spying the flash of resentment in Snape's eyes. "Her _birth_ initials."

"Yes."

"Not M.B. but—M.M."

The two letters hung, rang empty in the air for a split second, before falling, twin pieces, into place.

_Of course_. He had been ridiculously blind. The eyes, the skin, the occasional haughty bite.

The Headmaster, predictably, punctuated the realization with a _pop_, and he was left to whisper the damnable answer to himself. "Lucius Malfoy."

He ought to have learned long ago that answers are not always what they're cracked up to be.

* * *

Severus Snape was, occasionally, a man of his word.

Not only had he returned to 10 Kingsfoil Row with the requisitioned Mixtures, he had also not—in accordance with his own personal vow—donned Muggle clothes. Despite the heat and the sticky syrup of the air, he'd kept with those black linen robes, buttoned straight to the chin. And he'd apparated straight into the building, bypassing the gawks and the guffaws.

There were definitely advantages to traveling without the Headmaster.

Just as there were pitfalls.

Even after the revelation of Miss Branch's paterfamilias, Dumbledore had insisted Snape return alone, all arguments for discretion and respecting Slytherin social politics brushed aside. No matter how many time, no matter how many ways he tried to explain the dangers to the Headmaster, he met the same twinkling smile. _It could answer our questions, Severus. And, besides, it's the least we can do._

That damned "we" again. As if the two of them were bound, soul with soul, lion and serpent, on some mutual journey of morality.

It had been the same when he served as spy. Then it had felt comforting: now it simply reeked of—manipulation. How in the world Dumbledore could manage manipulation while still coming out so lily-white, he still had not grasped. Perhaps it was merely the Headmaster's way of speaking in a language he knew Snape would understand.

And he'd understood this little mission well enough. Feel out the situation, see what she's willing to say without the ears of the most beloved and perceptive wizard of the day sitting on the other side of the table.

He stared at the door a moment longer.

He'd spent the intervening night mulling over the possible scenarios, leafing through the school's files on Antigone Branch. She'd been a dull student: he recognized the type after so many years teaching. Either minimal effort or minimal intelligence. Or, more likely, both. It was likely that, even if the elder Branch had remained without child long enough to sit her NEWTs, she would have ended up at the Scarlet Siren sooner or later. She'd barely earned enough OWLs to qualify as a waitress at the Leaky Cauldron.

That began to make sense now, at least. The mother was a year ahead of Lucius, a Slytherin, a lazy student but clearly an ambitious witch. And there were two well-worn avenues of ambition for a Slytherin witch: strength or sex. Power with the magical arts or the arts of pleasure. A Malfoy would have little use for or interest in the former.

A half-hearted second search of the files had revealed no other Branch in the recent Hogwarts roles. If he'd truly cared, he might have checked the Prophet archives: but that would not answer any of the questions foremost in his throbbing head.

Namely, what kind of a delightful surprise he could expect waiting behind this innocent, silent door.

She was still in contact with someone in the wizarding world, that was almost certain. He could only hope it was not her dear father or his associates. Those circumstances would make their way through the old Circle and back to him: and if there was one thing he hated discussing with Lucius it was _circumstances_. Especially those involving him and Muggles, Squibs, and Dumbledore.

Perhaps she wanted to tell him to keep his mouth shut about what he'd seen. Perhaps she wanted to feel out his acquaintance with Lucius. Perhaps she wasn't a Squib at all, and this murder-and-Dark Mark backdrop was a clear indication that toying with her further was the Headmaster's worst idea to date.

Merlin's Beard. He could fabricate a thousand scenarios if he waited. Best to get in, do Dumbledore's usual dirty work, and find out firsthand.

He wrapped on the door, firm, unwilling to feel the shrill buzz of the bell cleave his aching head in two.

_Knock. Knock. Knock._

No rustling about, no moment of silent evaluation: only three quick clicks of the lock replied to his knock. Logic might have led him to expect greater trepidation this time: but he'd given up guessing in this matter. It was answers he'd come to find. Logic hadn't yet prevailed in this case.

An observation that held up as, once again, the demeanor of the girl greeting him had utterly transformed. There was certainly no anxiety, nor were those pale eyes guarded as they had been just the previous afternoon. She merely looked like someone opening the door to sign for a bit of expected post.

Which, in a way, he growled inwardly, was precisely the case. _Severus Snape, Hogwarts Owl._

"Miss Branch."

She leaned out the door, loose-hair shifting around her face like a curtain. "Professor."

He was about to assure her that he had come alone—he'd drawn the exasperated asperity into his lungs—when he caught a glance of the blue-haired woman's bifocaled eyes staring up at them, narrow, from down the winding staircase.

"Good afternoon, Miss Watson," the girl sighed in that direction, with a half-hearted simper.

And then, for the second time in their brief acquaintance, Messalina Branch had the nerve to touch him, grabbing hold of his wrist and pulling him into the flat with an impatient growl.

The grip of her fingers was loose, and she released him as quickly as she'd taken hold, once they were safe from those prying bug eyes. But the touch had sent a strange jolt down the tensed cord of his spine. More than surprise at the suddenness and presumption of the contact. More than the normal shock he experienced when anyone touched them of their own volition.

No this was—unnatural. Or, more to the point, it was _magical_. He'd felt something similar the first time he'd tried an Unforgivable. He hadn't the stomach to really _mean_ the words, and all the magic had fizzled, backed up his bones a bit. _A little shock through the system_, his partner had observed, trying to reassure him that it happened to most everyone the first time.

It didn't happen a second.

He shook the distraction away, filing the sensation alongside all the other tiny questions. Answers, that's what he was after. Answers.

"Couldn't be bothered with Muggle clothes I take it?" She was looking him up and down froma comfortable distance, wrapping her fingers around the door three sturdy locks. _Click. Click. Click._

_So the lady doesn't wish to be disturbed…_

Their shoulders squared against one another, and, once again, he couldn't believe his previous inability to distill pure Malfoy from her sharp features. He had a good five inches on her, but, at the moment, she was exhibiting the family knack for making herself seem taller than anyone or anything in the room. It was affected, just as it was with Lucius: but affected did not preclude _e_ffective, and he marveled, with some disdain, at the girl's ability to change with every encounter. Skittish mouse, cold Slytherin, and now—untouchable. Untouchable and unreadable.

"Well, I suppose it's better than Albus' fashion choices, but I've no doubt my landlady will be popping by again with a few more quest—"

"I've brought the Mixtures." His sotto voice sliced through hers, stern yet slow, all knife through warm butter. He watched her reach for them, hand skirting his with marked caution. She carried the small box of vials to the table, settling down over them to inspect.

"The supply should last around a year," he continued, as she removed one of the bottles, and uncorked it, held it up to the sunlight, sniffed it deeply. "I assure you they're—"

Apparently, however, his assurances weren't necessary as she gulped down an entire vial in one throw.

_Not Slytherin enough by half_. No one with any brains—or perceptive faculties of any kind—had ever quaffed so recklessly at his concoctions. He almost wished he'd dared to slip some jobberknoll feather in them: it would have expedited any fact-finding quite nicely.

She paused a moment, eyes unfocused, waiting to judge the effects. The judgment betrayed no fear or suspicion, but eagerness, as if _she_ was the Potions Mistress deliberating over his mark.

_Foolish girl_. Your father would have had no patience for you. Which, come to think of it, was probably a very accurate account of the girl's relationship with the elder Malfoy. If she'd been raised under Lucius' elevated nose, she'd carry a bezoar in her pocket. Just as he did.

"Brilliant," she drawled simply, replacing the empty vial. "Relief at last."

"You know, a teaspoon is more than sufficient dosage." He frowned. At that rate, the supply would last closer to a month than a year: and he would _not_ be prevailed upon to perform another random act of kindness. Dumbledore could twinkle all he wanted: Sutton Hill would never see Severus Snape again.

"Mister Snape—excuse me, Professor: I have had a migraine almost every day since I turned sixteen. Just this once, I think I'll indulge."

If it was sympathy she'd expected, she'd be disappointed. They sold Migraine Mixtures in every wizarding town across England. If she couldn't be bothered to catch the Knight Bus, he wouldn't bother with empathy. Besides, there was more to this little visit than a medical issue…

"Thank you, Professor, for your_ troubles_." Hand through her hair in that seemingly unconscious gesture. "I trust you remember the agreement—?"

The dismissal—unfortunately—was clearly disingenuous. She had settled into her seat, barely looking back at him and making no ready movement to see him out. She merely sat, breathing deep and blinking long. He recognized the symptoms of relief all too well. Perhaps, he'd given her short shrift: the claim of headaches, was, perhaps, more than a stratagem.

"I remember quite well, I assure you." His fingers wrapped, leisurely, around the back of the sofa, causing stretched shadows to ripple through the damnable sunlight. She had curtains: why didn't she draw them, for Salazaar's sake…

He cleared his throat, a deliberate, pedantic mannerism borrowed from the classroom. "I promise you, Miss Branch, I will not darken your lovely doorstep again. However—" An interested glance drawn across his face. "—the Headmaster suggested I offer you one further service."

No response. But he was glad to see those easy lips part slightly, discomfited.

"He thought you might accept the offer of a few inconspicuous wards on the flat. Since you seem so eager to remain—unavailable—to visitors." His free hand flipped through the sun, lazily indicating the foeglass. Its gray eye peeked out from its vigil amongst the overwhelming bookcases, vision still deadpan and lifeless.

He'd insisted to Dumbledore—once the visit had become a foregone conclusion—that he hardly expected the girl to allow him (of all people) to draw his wand a begin casting spells around her flat. A bit like letting Voldemort make you a spot of breakfast. But she'd taken the Mixtures easily enough, and she wasn't looking particularly concerned by his presence. If anything, she seemed at ease, as if, somehow, she had the advantage. Perhaps the Headmaster's vouch of trust actually _meant_ something to her.

No, not Slytherin enough by half.

Unless, of course, she now had no reason to fear him. Perhaps her father's vouch was more to the point.

They watched each other again, but this time she was not affecting anything at all. She was just looking, eyes half-hidden by hair, beetle black on gray. It wasn't silent though: he could still hear the echo of her relaxed breathing, rising and falling through his ears. And a fly. A damned fly buzzing, screeching like a banshee, from someplace in the room.

"That's a very generous offer." She smiled. It was really more of a tilted, half-frown, but somehow he could decipher it as a smile. "If it wouldn't be too much trouble, it—couldn't hurt."

It. Couldn't. Hurt.

Was she stupid or brilliant? It was impossible to make out on her masked face. As in chess, he noted: a player who charged forward, throwing pieces into the flames, was either a completely inept novice or—

Or a master.

He desperately hoped for no method to the madness. But he'd never been very good at self-deception: he wasn't built for it.

"No trouble at all," he growled, watching her sidelong as he removed his want, swift as a dagger. Again, no response.

Well, if she was going to play this out, he was bloody well not backing down. He'd played a few games of this sort in his own time…

Besides, he thought, starting with the door, the sooner he got on with it, the sooner he could get out. Stalemate perhaps: but Dumbledore couldn't accuse him of not trying.

"I assume I can't interest you in some tea?"

He snorted, gold light dripping from his wand and enveloping the door, shaming the paltry sunlight. "I think not." The spell faded and dripped through the seal and hinges, emitting a soft, mellifluous hum. Across the room, the fly buzzed a shrill response.

She was staying quiet, expectant. Another brief memory flashed through his mind: playing gobstones with Mum. In the closet where Father wouldn't see. She'd sit, quiet, and stare over her own hooked nose with that same palpable air of expectation. _Make your move_, it offered gently. _I'm already three moves in. Get a lead on._

He growled again, moving towards the first window.

That had always disconcerted him then: he'd made mistakes.

Gold again, hum and returned buzz.

The words barely grazed his passing eye before setting off its own buzz in his mind.

He paused and leaned into the bookshelf to be certain.

_Magic of the Mind: Legilmency and Occlumency, A Methodology. Master D. Fitzwilliam Bruce._

Fly buzz exploded very close to the echoing chamber of his ear. He traced the dart, half-consciously, and, with not so much as a moment's thought, he slammed his palm down on its purple-black body with a crunch.

Now _that_ was silence.

Dog-eared and spine-pressed. _The Squib had been studying…_

"Wards _and_ pest control. You really should charge."

For a moment, he forgot the situation and chuckled, inspecting the heel of his hand now dotted with brown blood and exoskeleton.

Not as badly marred, however, as the fly's final resting place, which was now strew with purple guts of an insect undone. He lifted the smeared book from its spot on the small end table, reading the unfamiliar title from between disconnected legs and wings.

"_Rime of the Ancient Mariner_," she offered as he laid the book aside once more. "Muggle poet. Do you know it?"

He moved on, not really listening, mind returning to the work of Master D. Fitzwilliam Bruce. It was the text Dumbledore had recommended to _him_.

"Shame. Muggles make better—and more apt—poets than any wizard. You might agree." She cleared her throat, a mockery of his own mannerism.

"The many men, so beautiful!

And they all dead did lie:

And a thousand thousand slimy things

Lived on; and so did I."

He paused, mid-cast. Deliberate. Remarkably, Slytherin-ly deliberate. The few enunciated syllables hung, purple, in the air, buzzing with more ferocity and greater pointedness than any fly.

_A thousand thousand slimy things_. Well, it was good to know her acceptance of his presence hadn't sprung from some sudden regard. "Slimy" was an appellation he'd become more than familiar with in his time at Hogwarts: it was somehow comforting to hear it from her. It put him in more familiar territory—in a place her could find his bearings.

And it meant, of course, that she was willing to play. _Foolish girl…_

He turned back to her, to the same tilted smile: less malicious than Malfoy, more conversational.

"Are there any other windows easily accessible by broom?"

_Don't say yes: be done with this._ He saw positively no use in dragging the charade out further. The only way to force her hand was to keep things brief with no more opportunity to circle around one another, sniffing the air.

If she would just stop watching him through those Lucius eyes, so similar, yet, in some way, much worse. As if she could see _through_ him.

_Legilmency, Severus. Remember that._ She'd clearly studied and, Squib or not, she was searching him for something, trying to confound his defenses. _The windows, damnit. Are we finished here or not?_ –Those were the only thoughts he would allow her to read.

"You were a Death Eater."

Straight to the gut, another jolt. But this one wasn't magical: it was pure, cruel shock.

This wasn't chess anymore: it had become boxing.

That would do much better to be getting on with.

The nearest bookshelf creaked a little as he leaned on it, forcing amusement. "Yes." He was more than aware of that sharp past tense, that "you_ were_." He made sure his response matched in ambiguity, in heaviness. "Obviously, I would have thought."

A fact that seemed to please her, unexpectedly. Perhaps she, too, felt eager to speed up the farce—to return to their separate corners and nurse old prodded wounds.

"Did you—know my mother?"

Not scathing nor accusatory. The words had all the appearance of genuine curiosity. Even more suspect.

"No, I did not," was all he could find to say. The alternation of punches and pulls was throwing him off, but he pulled his face into contempt as best he could. "But I know your _father_."

Changed again, simple expression deepening into complex tugs and sparks, everything brightening like fire.

He spied, for the first time, a weakness in her defenses.

"He never mentioned you—or your mother."

She read the question in the declaration and turned her face away. Simple rejection. Surely she could have anticipated this: surely she was regrouping, raising the alarm.

But he reacted to advantage like a kneazle to a dark wizard: he pounced. With claws.

"The Headmaster seems to think several of my former—colleagues—had a hand in your mother's death."

He couldn't see her resolutely turned face, but the flat stretch of her hair trembled, shivered, a betrayal of slow and silent fury—of repressed words and thoughts and, doubtless, expletives. Her hands pressed together in her lap, spotted white with tension, all her carefully constructed calm beginning its tumble into the rubble of rage.

His voice always got softer when he felt at his most vicious. It got simple and clean and precise: a surgeon's instrument. "Let's get straight to the point, Miss Branch, shall we?" The stiff row of books behind him toppled as he removed the title in question, throwing it onto the table before her. "What does a supposed Squib want with Legilmency?"

Silence.

He slid forward, blotting the light as he stood over her, close. Close enough to brush her thin knees with dark linen. "What would a Squib want with any of these texts?"

That gained her eye contact once more. Flashing, striking eye contact that might have made someone like the Headmaster quail for propriety's sake. But he'd seen fiercer, fierier eyes in his time. _You're not Voldemort, dearie. Wiggle out of this one, if you can. But save your intimidation for someone who hasn't stared through the empty red of the darkest wizard of our times._

"Get. Out." Her voice had matched his in its razor-edge quiet.

"I don't think so, Miss Branch," he sneered back. "Not until you explain why the foremost thing on your Squib mind is the Dark Mark. And _don't_ feed me lines about tragedies of the past—I'm not Dumbledore. I've seen Lucius' Mark, and that's—"

"Of course you have!"

And suddenly, it was far closer than he'd ever intended. Hot breath broke, crashed up at him, and he was lost in the pulsing ice of her deep, desperate stare—impaled by the bite of her gaze.

_A cornered serpent always strikes_: it was the unofficial motto of his house.

Despite his earlier bout of bravado, he stepped back slightly, unwilling to feel the quaking of her taut muscles as they rippled up the folds of his robes. But she'd sunk in her teeth and would not be shaken now, following him step for step, ferocious, stalking.

"How _dare_ you talk to _me_ about the Mark? How dare you!" The crescendo of each word as it built from quiet threat was a full symphony: strings stretched, winds all tremolo, tongue percussive, pounding out a rhythm of hate. "Is this just another little thrill for you? Like Muggle torture. You did that—I know. A pregnant woman. You crucioed her until she choked on her own tongue in the contortions of pain."

"How the bloody hell—"

"Yes, you enjoyed that one though: but you felt bad. You went back to her funeral, didn't you? Julianne Emory was her name, wasn't it?"

If it was possible, she'd moved even closer, until it felt as if she was _inside_. Inside his rapidly heating skin.

"That's what you _do_, isn't it, Snape? You torture the inferiors, get a few jollies to make up for your dad telling you what an ugly, useless worm you were? You showed him, didn't you. Made up for that cute little Muggleborn girl who wouldn't have touched you with dragonhide gloves. Or maybe it was for those kids who hung you upside down and showed your ratty old knickers to the whole of Hogwarts? Eh, _Snivellus_? Was that the one that did it? That the one that sent you off to him? Or was it that little werewolf prank? Or that Scarlet Siren you _did_ enjoy, who charged you 20 galleons extra in hardship pay?—Or maybe it really was just seeing your Muggle father pound his fists into your dear mum's tender face! How simple, how _weak_—"

He didn't think, couldn't. He just reached out, reacted, crashed. Like the fly. But heavier. More sadistic.

He'd pinned her to the nearest bookshelf, wand jabbed into the slender hollow of her throat.

"Show me, Snape. Show me how a Death Eater handles his past…"

"Silence!" No longer soft and dangerous. It was a howl, a roar, as he fought for some semblance of control. Control over himself.

"You won't do anything, Snivellus. You went to Dumbledore to save her, didn't you. And you never looked back. Only thing that saved your wreck of a soul. You couldn't do it now. Dumbledore has changed you…you wouldn't dare start up again with me…It would make you think of Emory or of _Potter_…"

This was too much. She'd penetrated too deep somehow, violated parts of his past that no one should ever have known.

"Who told you that?" He slammed her harder against the solid oak, books raining down around them, punctuating the question with the crash of paper and tile. "Who the _hell_ are you working for?"

His wand was convulsing, forcing the words from her throat in strangled half-whispers. "Go. To. Hell."

His voice was stretched to tight to sound. Legilmency was no good: he was too damn scattered. He could barely keep his eyes still from the rage.

_Tear her open, Severus. Rip her open, like she did you. Rip, tear, rend…_

He settled, in the seizure of sadism, for tearing from her the one answer he could.

The Muggle sleeve ripped, easy, with a tiny scream of stitches up her arm, exposing the pale cream of bare, unmarked skin beneath.

_Almost_ unmarked. For, in the sea of pure white, faint pink stared back, warped but crisp, every ugly line a mirror of what he'd seen, skull and half-buried snake mocking his anger.

The flash overtook him, tumbled and mixed with everything she'd hurled back into the light. Mum and Lily and Potter and Malfoy and Father and Black and Emory and

Voldemort.

Voldemort surfaced between them all, looked back at him through all those eyes.

He threw her away, sickening jolt shaking his bones again, his mind swimming—no drowning in those warped, buried faces.

"Get out! Out!"

The path to the door twisted, turned over. _She's in your mind, Severus. She must be._ There was nothing else to do but tumble along—get out. _Run, Snivellus, run. _If he opened his mouth, even for a second, he would do something—something Unforgivable. He'd lost all sense of time and place, entombed by white rage and that Mark and that face—her face, his eyes—_damn_.

The locks, the knob were ice under his skin.

_Slimy Snape, Slimy Snape, he can't get a single date—_

Damnit. Damnit.

_Slimy Snape, Slimy Snape, his mother must've screwed a snake…Slimy Snape, Slimy—_

"Snape!"

The raw vertigo of his brain was suddenly achingly physical.

Bloody hell. She'd thrown something at him. She'd hurled a bloody book at the back of his head.

He was almost grateful for the blow: it had banished the memories, the voices, the upended flood of fury.

"There's your answer, you cunt," she hissed. She purred. "Now leave me damn well alone."

_Slam._

_Click. Click. Click._

That silence again. Vacuum of silence.

_Answer_, she'd said. Answer. That's what he'd wanted, somewhere, before it had all disappeared into wrath and reminiscence.

He leaned down and cradled the book—the missile—in his still trembling hands.

_Mapping Time: Advanced Studies in the Art of—_

He paused as his overheated brain clicked, all at once, into gear.

_Cartomancy._

Bloody hell. Bloody fucking hell.

The Occlumency. Her expectance of their call. The knowledge of events in the wizarding world. Her intimate knowledge of his—

Divination.

The bitch was a Seer.

Barely gripped in his loosening fingers, a single leaf of parchment drifted, with mocking gentleness, to the ground.

He didn't need to lean down to see it clearly.

Covered in scrawled pictures and symbols, he recognized the girl's looped handwriting. And, atop a carefully sketched diagram of cards and planets, the words glared at him, up through the silence.

_Severus Selenius Snape._

_Repeat the lesson, Severus_. Sometimes answers aren't all they're cracked up to be.

* * *

A/N:

Sorry for the delay in this chapter: as you can see it's rather ambitious in length, and editing took a good long while.

Snape's middle name was shamelessly nicked from Ladyofthemasque's _In Annulo_.

I hope some questions were answered, some mysteries solved. More tastiness of that sort to come.

The next chapter will be a short one, back in the "present"—a sort of reliving of "The Lightning Struck Tower" from Snape's POV.

Please R/R! Thanks again to whitehound and wynnleaf!


	4. There But for the Grace of God

**_Chapter Four:_ There But for the Grace of God**

_June, 1997_

Apparently her threats to floo the Ministry had been a bluff. He ought to have known that: ought to have remembered that Lina Branch was the last person in England—with the possible exception of the Dark Lord—who wish to connect to the Floo network. It required registration with the Ministry: and, these days, the Ministry could be every bit as frightening as the Other Side.

_His_ side, he reminded himself, setting down the silver vial gently.

He should have thought of that. He wasn't usually one to miss things.

But then, his mind wasn't at its clearest at present.

And, of course, she couldn't have registered the address anyway. She was in a Fidelius kept house of which she was not the Keeper. Even messier to explain.

_Get a grip, Snape,_ his mind insisted as he ran a heavy hand through rows of greasy, blood-clotted hair—an unconscious mimic of her habit. _You can't start overlooking things _now. In a handful of hours, he'd be standing in the Circle, staring down the advancing forces of Voldemort's mind. Not the time to start waxing nostalgic or—worse—going suddenly obtuse.

The breath he forced was still tinged with lingering spice and flame. _Just one more thing: just one more piece of work and then—_

_And then who bloody well cares. _The Order or the Death Eaters—either could claim him. At the moment, he was feeling a bit apathetic about both. He'd been a pawn for so long, it hardly seemed to matter whose fingers were on the pieces anymore.

_That's it: remember that game—that game of chess with Lina_. If he could remember how to move for just a few more hours…Then, one way or another, the Game could go on without him for all he cared.

Drawing another stinging lungful, he pushed his stiff, exhausted body up, and up, and up the stairs—too many stairs—to find her.

But somehow—as if they'd never stopped playing the game at all—he knew precisely where she'd be.

The sight rang familiar, threads of the past in her hunched back. She sat, moonlight filtering through the now opened curtains, sliding like frost down the muted dark of her hair. Curved forward, chin cradled, eyes damp but still, she was locked, focused, on the inert form rising and falling in sleep beneath the sheets. It was a cruel, melancholic satire of mother and child as she reached out, fingers long and deliberate, and pushed a damp strand of moonlight-shining blonde from the boy's pressed eyes.

He didn't need Legilmency to know the thought sighing through her brain, causing those white, careful fingers to shiver over the boy's face. _There but for the Grace of God…_

The tender register of her voice, soft as the moonlight. "What—happened to Lucius?"

If the dark, muted shadows hadn't seemed so elegiac, he might have smirked. Her tone was different than even a half hour before. Just like it had been then, never knowing what she would be from one moment to the next.

But this change, at least, he could comprehend. The dull emptiness of a heart too full and a mind too overwhelmed.

"You don't know?" He'd assumed she'd been keeping appraised, in her own unique way, of all the tumultuous goings-on in the wizarding world.

"You know very well I avoid any—knowledge—of my dear father when possible."

_Odd she should mention that_, he thought, as now, side by side, he saw how much the two young Malfoys resembled one another. Totally different lives: but they'd grown together to a familial point and, when summed, equaled the full presence of the despicable man in question. Draco had the features, Lina had the presence, the keenness. And, then, of course, like anyone born to the legacy of Lucius Malfoy, they both looked like absolute wrecks.

"He was arrested last year along with a few others. They broke into the Ministry."

He remembered enough of her mannerisms to know when she needed no further information. She nodded, withdrawing from the boy, tired eyes retreating inwards. "I see. And a thoroughly displeased basilisk-snogging bastard decided to throw the son into the flames. Along, it seems, with you."

"As far as I know, I was never _out_ of them."

It felt good, through the haze of fatigue, to see that half-quirk smile. Again, as it had been then. Yell and snark and tear one another to bits—and, when all demons were purged and there was nothing left for raging, they could sit back in surrender. And, sometimes, in those moments, he could make her smile—if they both forgot themselves long enough.

_The Game, Severus. You haven't the time._

He cleared his throat, leaning his burdened back against the door jamb. "Lina, I—we don't have time. I'd ask you to reconsider Albus' request—"

"I want to see it."

He paused, all too afraid he knew what she was asking. "See--?"

"I want to see Albus. I want to hear the request and reasons from his own lips."

On the bed, Draco groaned, rolling away.

"I told you, he's—"

"Dead." Something in the way she said it made him feel the word down at the spongy root of his stomach. Something in those innocent dentals made his throat tighten. "Yes, I remember. But if you're going to break into my house, a fugitive, just a few minutes after murdering Albus Dumbledore and just a few hours before returning to You-Bloody-Well-Know-Who, I don't think a little request of proof should be out of the question."

At least the rising irritation was reawakening his mind, injecting a little Slytherin energy through his weary veins. "Don't toy with me, Lina. You know it's true. Nimue's knees, you're the only one in the entire bleeding wizarding world who _could_ know that! You already said you'd discussed it with Dumbledore himself!"

"The sooner you agree, Snape, the sooner we can get on with it." Standing, bringing her unhappy face to his chin, she offered him a paltry concession. "I have my reasons."

He'd damn well had enough of people's sodding _reasons_. People were always using those unnamed reasons to drag him around by his hooked nose.

But she was the worst about it: asking for answers, giving none back. Even worse than Albus.

_Even worse than Albus _had been, his mind reminded him.

_Damn._

_Better get used to being led about, Severus_, it reminded further. That's how these last damned days were going to unfold. At least he had some small, nagging faith in _her_ reasons. She, on occasion, had that Albus ability to induce trust.

And she was, after all, offering more help than half an hour earlier.

So he followed her back down—it was easier on the way down, like collapsing—and back to the cupboard where she'd kept the vial of memories.

The pensieve did little to keep his reminiscing at bay. The stone oval—shallow and barely large enough to hold more than a couple of thoughts—was cold in his hand, and he allowed himself only a very brief moment to run his fingers over the three letters carved deep in the bowl's nadir. E.A.P.

She didn't miss it. "You should take that back, when you go. I don't use it anymore, and it's yours, after all."

Ignoring this, his wand at his temple, he realized he'd mistaken apprehension for irritation. He wasn't upset that she'd asked: she had the right, Merlin knew. But he didn't want to see it again. It could play through his mind—as it undoubtedly would—'til the end of his miserable days: but standing in it, feeling choked again by the wide-open reality of it…

What he wanted, however, hadn't mattered for a very, very long time.

The two memories, a sickly mixture of silver and green, swirled together, lapping up at the pensieve's lip like an overfull glass. Dancing across the surface, the brilliant, terrible light of the Dark Mark shone, even through the past.

"You—don't have to—with me—if—" The horrible green dappled her wide gray eyes, a perfect mirror of the basin.

No. No running. If this was what she'd wanted…

He seized her wrist and prodded the glowing substance viciously.

Light faded into driving darkness. His eyes were blind, leaving only the crunching sound of steps in his ears and the fresh, cool air of early spring on his skin. Insects were sighing, night birds were flapping and swooping through the distance. As his sight adjusted, slow, he could make out the murky lace of branches swaying overhead.

And then, all at once, as his vision returned in focusing patches, he was staring straight into that face—that haunting face. The eyes, however, were not twinkling. It had been the only way he'd ever been able to tell when the old man was seriously troubled.

Alive. Alive again.

His guts twisted. _But not for long._, And, even then, at that moment he had been planning—

"Damnit, Albus! Listen to me and stop behaving like a ruddy Gryffindor first year. It _won't work._" His alter-self was, of course, a perfect contrast to the Headmaster, pacing, roaring, thrashing like a pinned snake.

"Severus, need I remind you of our—"

"No!" Venemous rage reverberated through the hollow, drowning out the myriad calls of surrounding creatures. He fought the urge to shush him memory-self—and the urge to agree with him all over again.

"No, you needn't remind me. But perhaps someone should remind _you_ of the situation. Narcissa wasn't asking me to help Draco pass his apparition test, Albus. You—you can't be serious."

Present day-Snape allowed his gaze to dart, briefly, to Lina's watching eyes. She'd withdrawn a few respectful feet, observing, solemn and inscrutable. What she'd be making of this—what she knew already—he couldn't guess.

"I am quite serious, Severus. As you well know."

His memory-self apparently had nothing to howl about in response, snorting derisively and continuing his frantic path through the underbrush in noxious silence.

"Severus, you and I both know I'm dying—"

"Bollocks! In a few more months we'll have worked out a way to heal that blasted thing—"

"Severus."

The soft interruption had only infuriated him further. It had the same effect on the second go-round.

"There's nothing noble about this, Albus. There's nothing noble about a death wish—isn't that what you bloody well told _me_?"

And then, oh gods. The bastard—that _bastard_—smiled. Infuriating, indulgent calm. "I'm glad you took those words to heart."

"Damnit, Albus!"

"Severus, I have explained this to you. If Draco fails, it is in everyone's best interest that you fulfill your Vow. I have only half a year left at best: and you will be of much more use alive."

"So will _you_, you barmy—"

"_Severus._" The calm, strong voice, for the first time, grew stern: stern and solid as the trees around them. It had the desired effect of halting both Snapes completely. _Like a goddamned chastened child. _

"I realize there is still a great deal to be done. I am working tirelessly with every breath remaining—"

"With _Potter_," memory-Snape growled.

"Yes, for his part. And this is yours. You will return to Miss Branch. She could have the answers I do not."

He saw—as he remembered—the rise of bile and anger. _Just another pawn in Potter's quest, am I_. Albus was going to lie down and leave him to lead the Boy Wonder straight into the snake's den.

"And if the situation comes to a head, you _will _fulfill your Vow to Mrs. Malfoy. And proceed as discussed."

For all the anger and hate in his memory-voice, he could feel the truth again: not hate but despair, gnawing at every bone, shaking every nerve. "I'm sick of it, Albus! I'm sick of all these games—on _both_ sides! Ask me to face an Unforgivable. I'll do it. I won't even bat a goddamned eye. But this is madness. You've taken too much for granted. There are too many ifs and—"

"That is why Miss Branch's services may prove invaluable."

As he breathed, the whole forest stilled. Wind froze, trees petrified, the wailing of insects fell into hypnotic, entranced oblivion.

"Maybe I—don't want to do this anymore."

The oppressive silence crushed the words between black fingers.

"Severus Snape."

Only his heart had the courage to stir.

"You _will_ fulfill our agreement. It's an order, if nothing else. You took the Defense position: you knew it would be your last year—you knew your part. You _will_ do this, and I should _not_ have to remind you why."

He allowed himself to do now what he had not then. The burning of the tears stoppered, unborn, in his throat—the farthest he'd ever allowed them since childhood.

"Make investigations into your House. See what you can discover in the way of young Malfoy's progress—"

Tangible and vertiginous, the darkness of the forest twisted, morphed into the tall, narrow of tower stairs. The silence shattered with the blasting of wands, the crashing of stone.

And he was running past himself, terrible moment blurring seamlessly into terrible moment. It was almost too much, to have the two aching memories played, one atop the other.

But he took off after himself, tiredness of limb forgotten, lost in the desperation, as if somehow, this time, he could change it. He was only vaguely aware of Lina's light steps behind him—behind them—as they wound upward into the exposed night.

It waited, just as it had been. Bathed in the eerie green glow of snake and skull. Death Eaters skulking. Fenrir gnashing his inhuman teeth. Small, white Draco shivering like an uncertain star.

But, again, he saw only the Headmaster, crumpled, bent, and pale against the rampart.

_Turn back, Severus_, he wished at his memory-self, aching. _Throw yourself on one of those wands. Let one of those ruddy children keep you from—_

But the past didn't change. He'd learned that lesson the hardest way imaginable.

_We've got a problem, Snape._

He could only take his advice now. He turned away, letting the scene work to its own, inexorable conclusion.

_Severus…_

Dead. Dead. Albus Dumbledore _was_ dead. No matter how many times it happened, that was it. He'd followed orders: he'd done his duty. And, once again, someone was—

_Severus…please…_

Dead.

He'd read it, quick and harsh, in the wizard's failing, pleading thoughts. He was dying, one way or another. _Do it, Severus. Remember our agreement._

Even through closed eyes, the hatred stormed the walls of his heart. The one pain that even Dumbledore couldn't wash away, beat, mantra-like, through his mind.

_I remember. For all your faith and your wisdom and your second chances-- I'm still nothing more than a killer._

And the green, the blast, the thud, the castle—the swirling madness disappeared, and he was back in the house, back in the present. The naked, barren now.

Breath. Breath.

_Still bloody here._

Noble or not, that death wish was sounding better all the time.

"Severus—"

Her voice jarred against him, quiet and haunting echo of the memory.

His eyes opened grudgingly. Her pale face shone, mottled with tear-streaked glass of shadow.

"I'll do it, of course."

Dull register, numb, in the background of reality.

"It will take me some time to prepare."

Hands cradled his blood-dried shoulders, leading him, shell and guts, to the soft embrace of the couch. "Try and—get some rest."

Her fingers, remembering their earlier path, smoothed the hair from his eyes, warm pads on fevered flesh. "Get some sleep. I'll wake you."

Eyes shut once more, leaden and unwilling.

His defenses razed, his mind beset, he knew sleep wouldn't come. Probably would never come again.

The memories rushed in instead. He no longer had the strength to hold them back.

* * *

A/N: Phew! That was a tough one to write: I hope I managed a version of events that is both _HBP_ compliant and plausible.

The title of course comes from the phrase "There but for the Grace of God go I" (somehow, my friend and beta had never heard it) and refers to Snape/Lina's reflection of what her fate could have been had she been raised by Lucius as Draco was.

Next chapter, back to the "past" (1991). More Snape and Branch, more answers and—yikes—the beginnings of an actual plot!

Please R/R!


	5. In Vino Veritas

_Chapter Five: In Vino Veritas_

_June, 1991_

The door creaked outwards, sighing, accusing, as if to remind him.

Occasionally, Severus Snape was also _not_ a man of his word.

On this particular occasion, however, promise-breaking had been somewhat non-negotiable. A fact he'd more than ascertained through earnest, forceful attempts to keep his word. But Dumbledore had accepted no debate, no reasoning— not even a patient, knowing indulgence of misgivings. _You _will_ return to Miss Branch, Severus._ No softened "we" sprinkled between benign smiling and twinkling. This was not an errand of curiosity or concern. Nor contrition. This was one of those works that fell under their agreement of so man years before. The sort that the Headmaster had only to frown in order to remind him: this was an order.

And, after so many years, it chaffed to be reminded. Things between them had not worked that way for some time, and he didn't appreciate the tug at his gut—the feeling of being dragged backwards.

But that was the nature of his alleged salvation, his freedom traded against the precedence of his better judgment and a long, desperate span in Azkaban. And, as the damned girl had reminded him, a trade to "save his soul." Ridiculous. Actually, he'd intended to save someone else altogether. _Well done, as usual, Severus._

Dumbledore should have released him when the Dark Lord fell. Should have left him to the overly adequate penitence of playing the ex-Death Eater with Lucius and marking the essays of students who barely knew which end of a cauldron was up.

As if on subconscious cue, his left arm grew heavy, stiff.

That was the problem, wasn't it? It wasn't over. It might be starting all over again.

A fact that slammed his brain as he observed the door of #10C, open wide and defenseless, listing with its accusing sigh on splayed hinges.

He didn't pause to think: he didn't tick down the possibilities for traps or observers. His wand stretched sword-like before him, he charged two long strides over the threshold, searching for the culprit, the vandal, or—worse.

And it was worse all right. But not in any way for which he could be prepared.

No signs of struggle. No toppled bookshelves or flying curses. Not even a body. That he could have handled. That he _had_ handled.

But Lina Branch was unharmed and, from the looks of it, quite alone. She was stretched, lazy-limbed, across her usual armchair, an echo of the photo he'd seen of her lither, leaner mother. She had, apparently, abandoned the charade of long sleeves in the summer, dressed in a light cotton camisole, yellow-paged book resting open across short-clad thighs. A thin-stemmed glass graced her free hand, her other engaged in its habitual trek through limp strings of dark hair.

No, this was not something to which he was at all accustomed. He refused to lower his wand, waiting certainly for the trap to spring.

It seemed to be taking its time.

She looked up from her book, eyes pale and only vaguely interested in his dramatic entrance. "Professor, please come in. I've been expecting you."

His mouth opened, but his mind caught up. Of course she'd known. Merlin bloody well knew what on earth she _wouldn't _be expecting.

"How kind of you to leave the door open for me," he snarled, wand still drawn if only to maintain some feeling of control. "Kind and remarkably _dim-witted_."

She simply shrugged, setting the book aside and taking a sip from the almost empty glass. "I'm nothing if not considerate. Besides, it's easier than trying to adjust the wards— at least for the likes of me."

Nothing but a wan smile as he closed the door, adept fingers running down the locks as a magical film of gold hummed in answer to the nauseatingly familiar _click-click-click._

He was really beginning to tire of this place.

"Please, have a seat. With or without the wand pointed between my eyes."

But his wand had fallen to his side even before she'd commented. He knew, all at once, from the nakedness of her marked arm and the gentle, amused sigh of her voice, that _this_ was the girl. The genuine Messalina Branch—Messalina Malfoy. No posturing or guarding; for some unfathomable reason, she had dropped the charade. She sat easy, and her hands moved slow, languorous paths as she reached to refill her glass. The blush spotting her cheek answered his suspicions fully: the girl was well on her way to getting pissed.

If the intention had been to throw him off, she'd scored a rare "O" in his book.

"Please, sit, Professor. I've brought out refreshments perhaps more to your taste that tea." The decanted bottle sat between them, half-emptied already and sparkling blood-red in that damned, ubiquitous sunlight. Bloodwine, a decent vintage. He couldn't suppress a sneer. _Chateau Maloy, 1959._

He had to applaud her developed sense of irony at least. He lifted the already poured glass, inserting it warily beneath the excessive mass of his nose. No alarming undercurrents, no obvious traces of magical addition. After eleven years as a Potions Master and a brief but educational stint among Death Eaters, his olfactory system was more finely-tuned for poison than any other in United Kingdom. And the bezoar stayed in his pocket as well. A stitch in time, after all.

But Muggles had their own unfamiliar methods, he was sure.

"I can't brew potions, Professor, but if it will set your mind at ease, I'll have the first sip then."

The playfulness in her voice unsettled him more than any fear of poisoning.

"That won't be necessary, Miss Branch," he said finally, taking his now accustomed seat across from her. He would usually have assumed that such drastic change in behavior meant stratagem or manipulation. But the girl's returned gaze was so genuine, so simple, he didn't bother puzzling with it. People had that look after imbibing, of course. But this was more basic. More natural. More coherent.

She raised her drink in his direction. "In vino veritas, as they say." And the glass became half-empty.

Half-empty. He'd never seen it any other way.

He set his portion aside, untouched.

"Ahh, I've failed to please yet again," she sighed. "Just as well. It's got a hollow, bitter flavor to it. After its namesake, eh? I'm surprised my dear father would put his hallowed name on such a substandard product. He seemed so concerned about that…" Regardless of the appraisal, she partook of a second gulp.

And, despite himself, he felt himself unwind slightly. If she wasn't in the mood for another round of Seer versus Death Eater, he certainly wouldn't begin with provocations. There would be time for that later. "I realize, Miss Branch, that I had agreed not to inflict my presence on you again; however, after the information you –shared—on our last encounter, the Headmaster—"

"Excuse me, Professor, but we can return to the Headmaster's concerns in a moment. First, I feel I should apologize. For—what happened last time."

Severus Snape did not like being interrupted, but he liked apologies even less. Contrition did not engender in him either forgiveness nor gratitude. In fact it gave rise to the purest form of resentment, reeking as it did of Gryffindor self-righteousness. His well-worn reflex was to tear at such morality shows—to rip friendly facades to shreds until only anger and disgust remained. He preferred familiar territory.

But he bit his tongue, frowning, as he searched for some calculation to neutralize this ridiculous non sequitur.

"Even if you _were_ acting like a right bastard."

That almost sufficed. Almost broke the scowl. At least she wasn't acting noble or trying to bear the onus of the incident. The insult kept him sitting. "I _am_ a bastard, Miss Branch, and I am not in the habit of apologizing for it."

Upturned lips refracted, cracked, through glass and wine. "I wasn't expecting an apology. And I didn't have to consult the cards for _that_."

The vice-grip of tongue on teeth loosened. "Yes, well, as I was _saying_, the Headmaster was most anxious that I return after I revealed the information you so vehemently hurled at my head—"

"Don't worry," she chuckled, "I'm not apologizing for that."

He began reconsidering the proffered wine, if only to quench his rising umbrage at interruption. "_As I was_ _saying_, the Headmaster wished—"

He paused, hand halfway to the glass.

"Do you already know what I'm going to say? Because I'd rather not engage in useless—"

"No, please, go on. I'm not omniscient, for Pete's sake."

_Damn well seemed like it last time_, his mind hissed bitterly, as he sniffed at the glass again, this time appraising rather than searching. Earthy and weak.

"Please go on. I'll try not to interrupt, Professor."

"Indeed," he acquiesced, taking the wine in two small mouthfuls. She was right: it tasted like dirt and rosemary and slammed the palate with the unpleasant film of Skelegro. But he, too, found himself taking another swig, wondering if it was laced with some drug that kept the drinker drinking. It sounded like the perfect Malfoy method of marketing.

"The Headmaster wishes to make a request of you."

She watched him with pleased concentration, clearly gloating over the tacit victory of his second sip. "I see. And why did the Headmaster not come to make this request himself? I mean, besides the fact that you and I have developed such a natural, amiable rapport."

_Besides the fact I'm Albus' bloody postowl and workhorse you mean_, he heard himself saying. Might have said with a few more glasses. But he was not foolish enough for this "in vino veritas" play of hers…

"The Headmaster is rather busy at present. Seeing to the arrangements for a very _particular_ student who'll be arriving next term."

"Harry Potter—" her mouth muttered before her pressed lips indicated immediate regret.

_Damnit_, he remembered, of a sudden. She knew too much. He shouldn't forget that. He shouldn't forget what she'd said…before…

"And—what is the Headmaster's request then?" The attempted breeziness had the feeling of a badly constructed shack in the midst of a hurricane. "I can't begin to imagine what the most powerful wizard of our time could possibly need from Messalina Branch, the pitiable Squib."

He chewed through the statement in measured sips. The questionable assertion of Squibhood was interesting: but more interesting to him was her very apparent disdain at Dumbledore's pity. It was that familiar streak of Slytherin, which was apparently genuine to her. She made an interesting specimen when honest: the carved unicorn and serpent of her wand flashed through his mind.

"The Headmaster wishes you to use your apparent skills to answer a question for him."

The ease of her features faltered, blush draining from her cheeks.

"Absolutely not."

And the inevitable obstacle. It had been too easy thus far, and he knew it. "May I ask-- ?"

"I— I do not use my…ability… for the benefit of anyone. Even the Headmaster of Hogwarts. I hardly use it at all, actually," she said, flat-voiced.

"You were not so reluctant to go digging through _my_ past to suit your purposes."

This actually appeared to sting her. Further proof, he decided, that she was being remarkably candid. She likely wouldn't have betrayed this weakness otherwise. "That was different. I had to be sure you wouldn't—put me in danger. That you could be trusted."

The wine betrayed him too with a brittle, derisive chuckle. "And, you discovered…?"

"Harmless as a houself." Her smile had returned but the gray eyes faltered a little over her glass. Translation—_I don't know_.

"Hmm. Some Seer," he sneered, sitting back, feeling the wine begin its dizzying track down his veins. "Perhaps I should clarify the Headmaster's request. He is not asking how to bet on the Quidditch World Cup or how to invest his money with the goblins. He wishes you to read the cards for…the Dark Lord."

This silence had a shattering life of its own.

"As you read mine," he pressed. "Past, present and—future."

Lurching, astonished quiet measured itself in small draws of wine. The easy expression the alcohol had traced across her features morphed into lines heavy and sober. Glowing flashes of claret slicked the stillness, half-drunk glass of bloodwine pierced by a stream of sunlight. A tinge of Slytherin crept, slow, back into the rise and fall of her voice.

"And…what could the Headmaster possibly offer in return for such a service?"

Dumbledore had been mistaken: there was definitely some of her father in her.

"His assurances of protection. And, to that same end, lessons in the master of Occlumency. Provided, of course, by myself. As I said, the Headmaster is regrettably—"

"Busy," she hissed.

"Yes. But he fully understand the need for a woman with your gift –especially for one possessing no other apparent magical abilities—to learn the art."

Hand forced through hair, wine all but forgotten in the flashing sun. "That's quite good of him."

He considered himself somewhat of an authority on observing the unsaid—on a kind of Legilimency that required no magic or wand. And, tracing the down-curved veil of her eyes, he knew, without a doubt, that she was considering something far beyond the realm of bargaining or Occlumency. He knew just as certainly that she was carefully leaving something hidden, holding some further issue of the deal quite close to the chest. Perhaps she knew something already: perhaps she was fitting together pieces of some vague, cosmic puzzle. Damned if he could guess the scope or nature of divination. But he _could_ read the subtle signs of negotiation—of an opponent who still had an advantage.

"I'm not sure that's a very fair trade."

_You're telling me_. But then the Headmaster was not always in the business of making entirely equitable arrangements.

"It is an opportunity to aid the wizarding world," he said, unenthusiastically repeating the Headmaster's delightful, familiar response to this accusation. "And, if that doesn't appeal to you, consider the pragmatic side. If you don't agree, the Headmaster will not stop pestering me. And I, in turn, will have no choice but to continue showing up on your doorstep."

A small, wine smile slipped past her guard. "I've noticed that."

And, more worrying, he almost felt himself return the gesture of amusement. Somehow, in the course of the sarcasm and languid limbs, she'd managed to disarm him, leaving him with a sensation altogether unfamiliar. Comfort—of a sort. He could almost relate to the slow flicker of her gaze, the heavy breath of consideration. The dawning realization of a choice thrust before you: go on as you are or submit to Dumbledore and risk— quite a bit. There were far fewer threats of Azkaban and fare more guarantees of protection, but he could see the mirror of that moment here. Like watching the back of your own head: familiar and unfamiliar all at once.

_Wine, Severus. Just wine. Remember what you're dealing with. Remember what this quiet young woman was last time…_

She'd attacked as a Dementor, drawing all the darkness into the dusty light, holding it up to his eyes with the harshest of pleasure. You don't switch that kind of sadism on and off: you can't affect _that_. It had to be a part of a person, as bone-bolted as an arm or a leg. And the girl sitting across from him, sipping and machinating, was still the same.

The slightest façade of trust and friendliness: by Merlin, why did that affect him so? Pathetic really.

But, he knew, that was precisely why he felt an affinity with her and her situation. That flash and rend in her eyes as she'd ripped into him. That creeping arousal in her voice as she'd circled his overwhelmed mind. He'd seen it in her, the way he'd only seen it behind mask and hood. She wasn't a noble Gryffindor taking on the glorious cloak of the Order. She could, in a different life, have found herself seduced to the otherside. This choice would not be natural and Right to her: that's what made it a real choice. Like throwing out your compass and letting someone else lead you.

_No more wine, Severus. You're waxing philosophic. _If there was one thing he'd learned it was _never_ to trust anyone who might remind him of himself.

"And you think—I could master full Occlumency?" she asked finally.

"The fact that you've already exercised the art with some small force seems to indicate that you're capable of performing at higher levels, despite your…disability." Only a blink in response. "I am an accomplished Occlumens, and I believe, with some practice, I could help you improve." _If you're not as big a dunderhead as I usually have to teach, _his mind finished almost by rote.

"Improvement isn't good enough. If I'm going to do what Albus is asking, I need absolute mastery. Against—" A pre-emptive amendment caught her words. "Against the most powerful of Legilmens."

Another certainty: the girl was no fool. She understood the risks.

"I cannot guarantee anything. But, as I said, I have no doubt —no bloody doubt— that the Headmaster will insist on my instructing you to the utmost of your capability."

"Ahh. How diplomatic. By which you mean you'll teach me as much as my puny Squib mind can manage."

_Yes, she understood_. He shrugged and sipped the last of his wine despite his own prohibitions.

She sighed and retook her drink with a vengeance. The mixture of decision and its necessitated doubt chasing a ring around the lip of her glass, single finger following its trail. "Well, I suppose that's all I can ask." The glowing crystal gave a soft, reluctant hum. "I'll do it then, if only to keep meddlesome wizards off my doorstep. My landlady gets closer to chucking me every time someone of questionable normalcy appears on my doorstep."

"You were moving house any way, were you not?" he asked, aware, after doing so, that the question had come far too casually. He set the win aside, resolute. Enough was enough, after all.

"I suppose I will be. I saw that I would be, so I decided a spot of packing wasn't out of order."

_Sweet Merlin_. Why did he keep forgetting what she was? It was unnatural: people –even wizards—didn't talk about Time that way. He didn't enjoy the slight vertigo every time she spoke of the future as if it had been a holiday destination a few years back.

And he certainly didn't like the feeling of lopsided power. Especially with a Squib.

That was more like it. Empathy is only good in theory: in practice, the girl could be… dangerous?

Judging by the breezy rearrangement of features, she must have sensed his response. "So—how to we proceed then?"

He shifted. "We do not—yet."

"Ahh. Dare I guess there is yet another addendum?"

The sardonic Malfoy lilt in the question was enough to reawaken his concentration. "Indeed. The Headmaster is unwilling to enter into any arrangements until you explain…_that_."

He had not gestured, but her gaze flickered, knowing across the naked, spotted surface of her forearm. Familiar yet again. Certain marks had to be explained: he remembered that far too well.

"I see. A convenient way to satisfy his curiosity and get me to do a little intelligence work," she signed, wine sloshing exasperated in its glass. "The Headmaster certainly is a _clever_ man." On her lips, "clever" had all the force of an expletive.

He understood Dumbledore's "one more things" as well. He understood the checkmated feeling that went with them even better. "He is indeed. But it is, after all, quid pro quo of a sort. You seem to know all the sordid details of my past and could, no doubt, know as much about the Headmaster. Consider this a bit of—leveling the playing field. You needed to determine if I was trustworthy: the Headmaster wishes the same assurance regarding you."

The look she had settled on his came from a hard, steady place she had veiled until now. It was stronger and more sober than he could have imagined possibly in her clearly tipsy state. She seemed to be watching some shadow-play behind his eyes, and he was overwhelmed with the sensation of Legilimency.

But there was no magic: at least, none being channeled outwardly.

_Those are the eyes of a prophet_, he realized slowly, fingers twitching with discomfort. That's why they call them Seers: it was the kind of gaze that looked not at but _beyond_.

"Well, I did say 'in vino veritas,' didn't I?" she said, pushing the last drops past her lips with a shrug. "I suppose I'd ought to put my wine where my mouth is so to speak. –What do you want to know?"

"Where you got the Mark. Why it looks so—unusual. And what relationship you have with Lucius Malfoy," he replied, hearing Dumbledore's voice echo through his own. "As far as my experience extends, there were no Squibs amongst the Death Eater ranks…"

Her smirk was top form, her sigh heavy with unwillingness. "No. Thank goodness they overlook us pitiful blights on wizarding society when they go – recruiting—junior members."

She turned in her seat, settling back into the languid, draped position that appeared to be a Branch family pose. "As I informed you on our first encounter, my mum, Antigone Branch, was a Slytherin student some years ago. The Branch family had some history in the house, among them my grandmother and her father. My grandparents, who had been a fairly well-off pureblood family, had fallen in with Grindelwald and enjoyed great favor until his downfall. At that time, my grandmother was sent to Azkaban, and my family's assets were frozen and confiscated. From what little I recall –and what I have since pieced together—my grandfather was exceedingly bitter about this and was forced to raise my mum on a pittance, relying often on the kindness of many money-lending friends to make ends meet."

He nodded. It was a familiar plight among Slytherins of that generation. A few similar cases had occurred after the more recent Dark Lord's fall. It was dangerous, this betting on dark lords, unless, like himself, you had no carefully-hoarded pureblood fortune to protect.

"My grandfather died the year my mum came to Hogwarts. During the summers, she stayed with a distant aunt –you know how Slytherin relations work, I assume—and I can guess that this auntie was less than charitable. I never met her, even when Mum was scraping for food, so I assume there was no love lost between them. Regardless, my mum entered Hogwarts a penniless orphan. Poor but ambitious enough to be sorted into Slytherin, her head no doubt swimming with ideas of our family as martyrs to the pureblood cause. An idea she tried to stuff in my brain at an obscenely young age, and which I can only guess my grandfather successfully implanted in hers."

It was almost unnecessary for her to explain how her mother had wandered into Lucius Malfoy's grasp. But he let her continue, watching a patch of sun slither across the black glass bottle that bore the infamous name in question.

"So, you can imagine how a man like Malfoy would catch her attention: wealthy, powerfully, and attractive –everything my grandfather thought we Branches should be." Her slim finger sliced through her hair, briefly offering a full, hideous flash of the snake and skull insinuated across her Malfoy-white skin. "I imagine she threw herself at him. Impressed him in the only way someone as poor, powerless, and dull as my mum could—with her sex. They had a casual, secretive affair: I assume secret since no one seemed to guess when my mother became pregnant. No one, but, Headmaster Dumbledore…?"

He snorted. "As you said, he can be quite clever. But even he was not certain until he saw your wand."

"Ahh, of course. Well, then it must have been a very stealthy affair. But I have little doubt –_very little doubt—_that my mother got knocked up on purpose. She wanted a claim to Malfoy. She always did."

Again, a typical Slytherin story, he mused. But then most Slytherin stories were new incarnations of the same inbred pattern of power, ambition, and hedonism. It was all depressingly familiar.

"My mum left school when she discovered her pregnancy. It was Malfoy's sixth year, and, having turned sixteen and come into some allowance of sorts, he allowed my mother to move away from her aunt's care and into a flat in Knockturn Alley. She lived there, supported by him and, perhaps, his father—I don't know. He told her that as soon as he graduated and was settled into his share of the Malfoy fortune, he would marry her. It was everything my mum could have dreamt of."

He shifted again, limbs grown heavy with wine and history. So depressingly familiar.

"As you know, Malfoy did not keep his word. I've no idea if he ever had any intention of doing so, but, surprisingly, I think he might have, at first. He was young, and fathering a child must have given him the impression of power and adulthood. He supported my mum and me for four years, during which time I believe he must have joined those first seduced by—the first who would become Death Eaters." She was almost whispering now, entire body subconsciously drawing away from her confidante. "I feel sure this only pleased my mum further."

While she paused, eyes drifting in muted lament over the empty bottle between them, Snape tried to tabulate the timeline of her story. Lucius had been six years his senior, and, by the time he'd reached his fifth year at Hogwarts, Malfoy had been the most known and familiar recruiter of Slytherins interested in joining the Dark Lord's ranks. It seemed to add up except for one person glaringly absent from the account…

"And then my mum found out about Narcissa Black."

_Right in one._

"She learned through the gossipmongers in Knockturn Alley that Malfoy, with the express approval of his family, had been courting a seventh-year Slytherin named Narcissa Black. Her family was pureblood, upstanding, and powerful, and, beyond that, the young Narcissa was purported to be quite a beauty. Precisely the type my mum knew could threaten everything she'd been promised. And, to make matters worse, it was becoming apparent, as I rounded the five year mark, that I was _not_ going to be the powerful Malfoy heir my dear parents had dreamt of. The mediwizards at St. Mungo's had warned my mum that I responded to early medical tests in odd ways: sometimes indicating a Squib, sometimes not. As you know, most Squibs are identified within the first three years. Common magical objects don't respond as readily to them and, in to the early years of childhood, no incidents of uncontrolled magic are observed. Screaming tantrums for Bertie Bott's do not result in shattered glassware—that sort of common magical experience."

Every word was clinical, and he felt as though she was describing the symptoms from a textbook rather than experience.

"The uncertainty of my condition gave my mum hope, but she couldn't ignore it forever, nor could she keep it from Malfoy. He visited less and less and, with the drop-off in his presence, came a noticeable decrease in funds. My mum was forced to swallow her pride and take a part-time job at a shop near our flat. Things began to grow—unpleasant. Malfoy, bored of her, besotted with a new female conquest, blamed her for my weak blood. My mum would remind him of her family's bloodlines and of his promises to her. There was a lot of screaming. Those are my clearest memories of that time, actually. Probably where I got my temper, my mum."

Temper indeed. For a brief moment, he almost felt a pang of empathy for Lucius: he'd stared into the daughter's temper, and it was harrowing. But then he remembered that she had inherited Lucius' temper as well, which, though usually cloaked behind a cool, aristocratic superiority, was every bit as hot and violent as any other Slytherin-cum-Death-Eater. The girl had, then, inherited a double dose of temper. "And—how does this explain the Mark…?"

"I'm getting there," she said, uncrossing her arms to expose the mark in question. She watched its faint eyes only a few seconds with the solemn disapproval of a parent reprimanding a misbehaving child. "Eventually, as it became clear Malfoy was likely going to marry Miss Black, my mum's reminders of promises made turned into sideways threats. She would expose their affair. She would take me to the senior Malfoy and demand some recompense. Or, when things became very dire, she threatened to make it known that Malfoy had fathered a Squib: that the so-hallowed pureblood family had a streak of weakness. Miss Black would of course be unable to marry him, and he would have no choice but to remain with her. But Malfoy kept my mother at bay with promises of continued support and insistence that his relations with the other woman were to please his father and nothing more. And Mum bought it, I suppose, until she actually heard of the engagement."

Yes, he remembered this quite well from the other side. Narcissa had been the favorite of Slytherin in his school days—a sort of ideal woman to whom all his classmates applied for snogging rights. Unsuccessfully. When it became clear that Lucius had interest in her, however, her stature became one of downright awe. She became the undisputed Queen of Slytherin, and Lucius had asked for her hand the very day of graduation. It was difficult to imagine that, at the same time, Lucius' paramour and this girl had both been waiting in the wings, hoping for the possibility of his affection. Lucius had made his intentions with Narcissa very clear to everyone else.

"Then my mother did something very unusual. She didn't get angry or take her story to the senior Malfoy or the Daily Prophet. She invited her lover to our flat for dinner, congratulated him on his coming marriage, and told him she was chucking him. That she wouldn't compete with Miss Black nor be content as an unacknowledged 'kept woman.' They had a very cordial farewell dinner, and Malfoy told her he was happy for her. That she deserved better. That he'd try to help her get on her feet—try to get her a job at the Ministry. Secretarial or something. She said something along the same lines. And then—Malfoy collapsed on the floor. I remember this because he still had a bit of his dessert left, and I'd been eying it when he passed out."

Snape blinked. He had not expected this turn, nor would he have expected such rash naivety from a Malfoy. But, where women were concerned, men –especially Lucius—tended to act with far less blood available to their brains. "Poison?"

"I don't know what it was, but she'd put it in his wine: we'd all been eating from the same dishes. Whatever it was knocked him cold, and I remember my mum dragging him to the sofa and explaining to me that wine made grown-ups sleepy. I finished Malfoy's dessert while my mum was in the kitchen. When she came back, she had a tiny cauldron full of something and proceeded to rub it on my arm. She kept telling me to be quiet, not to ask questions, that this was something to help 'Daddy' wake up. Then she dragged me over to the sofa and rubbed some of the salve on Malfoy's arm. I was crying, her grip on me was so tight. When she pushed our forearms together, there was all this smoke and the smell of burning meat. I don't remember what happened after: I passed out."

For some reason, his arm twinged. It was a bizarre story, and he couldn't imagine what reasoning could bring a mother to inflict that mark on her child. But, theoretically, it was possible. The "salve" was almost certainly a strong mixture of Mimesisalve, a potion normally used in cosmetic magic. The Dark Mark, however, was a complex spell, running far deeper than the skin. Mimesisalve could not have fully transferred it, perhaps accounting for the warped, incomplete appearance of the girl's pseudo-Mark. Something like trying to stamp a set piece of parchment: the shape transfers, but the fine details are obscured, lost. "What did Lucius do? Did he know?"

Her fingers wrapped, tight and unthinking, over the skin of her arm. The thin, darted pink of skeletal eyes peeked out from beneath her grip. "I don't know what happened exactly. When I woke the next morning, Malfoy was gone, and my mother didn't mention it, even when I complained about the stiffness in my elbow. I can only guess at my mum's thinking now, with a bit more… understanding than I had then. It had to have been a desperate gamble to attach me to Malfoy in an undeniable way. It might have given her more to threaten him with: she could not only reveal his bastard child –a Squib—but she could further reveal his association with—" She swallowed, squeezing her arm more tightly. "—the Dark Lord. Perhaps she thought, in fact, of going to…him…himself, in some attempt to put pressure on Malfoy. I honestly can't guess which of these ideas ran through her head: but, whichever it was, it was a desperate, last-ditch attempt to connect me –and through me herself—with Malfoy. It did not have the effect she'd planned."

With each word, the girl's eyes had moved resolutely further from him, turned head sitting stiff atop a long, twisted neck. In sharp profile, he couldn't help but notice: she had Malfoy's nose. Plain, large-ish, angular, and upturned.

He knew what had prompted the withdrawal: he saw it occasionally with Dumbledore. It was the same look that arose in conversation when discussing the indiscretions of a woman in the presence of her son. It was the need to distance the words from the listener: to make a monologue from a dialogue. And it tended to occur whenever anyone discussed Death Eaters with Severus Snape.

"Malfoy did not return, I take it," he replied briskly, the way he always acknowledged the implicit discomfort of such discussion.

"No. He did not. But he knew what she'd done…somehow. So he sent several of his…associates to handle the situation for him."

And the discomfort no longer felt implicit. A gray eye scouted tentatively towards him, beating a quick retreat upon meeting beetle black resistance.

So the girl had run into Death Eaters before her removal from the wizarding world: the fear he'd run up against in the market was born of more than stories and secrecy. She had seen the cloak and the mask firsthand. He'd rarely met anyone who had and lived to recount the experience. He joined her in the discomfort now, feeling the inexplicable need to interject, "I was not among them."

She had not even asked, and he regretted the assertion immediately. It reeked of self-deprecation.

"I—I know." Her eyes lasted a bit longer on his this time. "At least I was fairly sure. It was one of the reasons I—checked." She released her grip on her arm, turning back to her monologue. "There were three of them that night. They grabbed me and dragged me into my mum's room. They looked at my arm, and one of them touched his arm to mine to reveal the…result of my mum's actions. They asked me if I ever felt it: if it hurt. I just cried and cried. I couldn't speak. They started—they beat my mum: but I couldn't stop. I couldn't. One of them knelt down next to me: it was a woman. I remember because that surprised me, her voice. I'd pictured all the Death Eaters like my dear father, I suppose. So when she started talking to me I that soothing female voice I just—cracked. I explained everything about that night and that it sometimes hurt a little: just sometimes, usually when I was asleep. And then I asked if they could make it go away and if they could tell my dad I was sorry and I didn't want him to be mad with Mum. I just babbled everything out until it collapsed into sobs again, and the woman sort of patted my back and told me I'd better be quiet now while the grown-ups worked things out. I just remember her voice. I just remember being terrified of that sweet, quiet voice."

He swallowed with some difficulty. It was hard to digest the story, especially remembering so many like it from the other side. He distracted himself with trying to guess who the woman could have been. It didn't sound like Bellatrix at all. He doubted Narcissa would have been sent to handle such business. Perhaps Junia. Junia had a little girl: she might have known the best way to…handle a terrified, sobbing Lina Branch.

"Then they turned to my mum. I don't remember everything: I was crying and covering my face. But I remember they had wands: two pointed at me, one at her. They weren't yelling. They were talking very, very soft. My mum's face was white –ghost white—and she was crying without making a sound. The only thing I really saw was my mum taking hold of one of their hands and one of the other men doing a spell that lit up the whole room. And then, they all got ready to leave. And the woman—the one who'd been so gently stroking my back—took hold of my should, jabbed her wand into my neck and said to my mum in that same sick, soft voice, 'Remember. If you break that, you won't be the only one who dies.' And they disappeared. And my mum fainted."

She was quiet again, words guttering out into a slight hiss of breath. For a sickening second, her child's voice –the racked, sobbing squeal—overlaid the sound from her lips. He forced a deep inhale, clearing his mind. He'd always had a gift for that. Had to have. The voice, the picture of a woman crying without a sound, the shuddering image of Death Eaters cradling a tiny porcelain-white child: they swept clean, replaced with the familiar black slate. The cold, hard center of a mind erased. Once again, all depressingly familiar.

"They…let you live."

Air caught against her teeth. Perhaps it was her own version of coping—of pushing away the memory. "Yes. I can't explain it, even now. There certainly would have been no danger in killing us: just put it down to another Death Eater incident. Might have even been explained away if they learned I was a Squib. There are only two reasons I can imagine they spared us. Either Malfoy feared my mum had told someone of their relations and felt it could all be traced back to him. Or, on the other unlikely hand, there's the chance that Malfoy, when it came down to it, really didn't _want_ to kill us."

The cold blankness swelled. "I doubt that very much."

He knew he was being cruel. He threw every bar purposefully, hurled every poisoned word with precision. There were only a few times –a very few times—that he regretted it.

But she didn't flinch. Or blink. Or breathe. She chuckled softly, sunlight seeming to crumple before her smirking gaze. She turned back, no longer concerned with sparing him. "You really are a bastard," she sighed, with an odd lack of spite. "Don't worry. I'm under no illusions as to the sort of man my dear ol' dad is. He certainly had no compunctions about killing my mum when he got the chance a few years later in that damned brothel." The smirk was brittle and broke apart against his emotionless face. "I think I try to believe it for her. I think she might have wanted me to."

"So…you think Lucius killed her?" he asked, taking back the abandoned wine glass almost without thinking. He'd heard what he needed now: alcohol would be all the more welcome.

"I don't think he did. I _know_ he did."

He stopped himself from asking how this time.

"They murdered her. In her whoring bed. They—Malfoy and his colleagues again no doubt—tortured her for hours. I don't know why. That—was not clear to me. Perhaps you…?"

Well, at least she wasn't ignoring his past now. "No. As I informed you, I had no knowledge of your mother or any of her affairs until Dumbledore told me." Bloodwine made excellent, absolute punctuation.

"Yes, I'm sorry. I imagine there were loads of killings that didn't even make the Daily Death Eater."

_Yes, be a bastard right back. _More Slytherin. More…comfortable.

"So, there you have it. Mimesisalve, a fucking barmy mum, and a father with a conveniently available Dark Mark and an inability to detect the smell of poisoned wine. Will that be enough to satisfy the Headmaster, do you think?" She was cool, relaxed again. It was admirable, if…a bit disconcerting. She might prove an apt Occlumens after all.

"What about the Occlumency? And the divination--?"

Flat lips, flat eyes. She became a study in two dimensions.

"That happened long after. Is it really necessary--?"

"I am merely asking the questions I can guarantee the Headmaster will have for me. If I have no answers, he will send me back, and we will have to start this all over again, upsetting your landlady needlessly. So, unless you have a second bottle corked away for tomorrow—"

"My mother left me at Our Lady of Mercy, a Muggle church, when I was a little older than seven," she interrupted, trampling his snark with a tone not unlike his own elocution when lecturing. "My parents adopted me only a few months after. I told them about the wizarding world I'd come from. It took them sometime to believe me, but I did provide some proof in the form of Sickles and chocolate frogs and a nasty birthmark that turned black at odd, random times. They were very religious and felt most comfortable ignoring it and its relation to me. But I was not ready to give it up just yet." She swept her hand at the hundred texts staring back at them through the creased pupils of their spines. "I was very foolish. I refused to accept my Squibhood. I took my Muggle allowance and had it changed through Gringotts order. I set up a whole mail order system with a bookshop in Diagon Alley and had a new text every week. I told myself if I studied enough in every field, I was bound to find something I could manage. Maybe even something I'd be good at. And, of course, if I could do that –if I could be a witch—I could go on to Hogwarts and my mum would have me back, and I could—return." She grinned. "Actually, I rather favored Potions. It seemed a discipline suited to someone for whom wand-waving was not any option. I probably know more on the subject than your seventh-year N.E.W.T. students: just couldn't manage the practical, I'm afraid. In fact, at eleven, I saved for three weeks to order a few ingredients. Tried to mix a hair-growing elixir in my Muggle mum's mixing bowl. Turned out to do nothing more than stink up my closet for near a month."

He snorted. "If it makes you feel better, I've had quite a few students achieve the same remarkable result," he grumbled, draining the last few ruby drops from the hollow of his glass.

She studied him over the empty, round lip as he drank. "Yes, well, I did everything right. There was just no…magic. That was about the time I gave up. I decided to concentrate on studies at my Muggle school and try to settle into my Muggle life. That lasted about two months before Dumbledore showed up on the steps."

His spine objected, pressed suffocatingly stiff against the sofa cushions. He shifted, uncrossing and recrossing his legs, trying to imagine this woman, seven years younger, leading Albus Dumbledore into a Muggle living room. Just like this, perhaps. But with no explanations then, Albus would have had no idea. He didn't look forward to enlightening the conscience-heavy ex-Gryffindor about Miss Branch's past. Seeing that regret in the Headmaster's eyes always made him feel somehow responsible. It made his own conscience stir. He did not enjoy secondhand guilt.

"I was excited for a split second when the Headmaster showed me the letter. It was like a confirmation: I wasn't hopeless. But then I remembered that I _was_. That I might have some infinitesimal amount of magic, but it wouldn't be enough. And, if my mum heard what a failure I'd become… I wasn't willing to go through that. So I sent the Headmaster on his merry. But it did spark something in me: a new, er, research interest."

He arched a brow. "Divination?"

"No. Squibs. I started researching theories about Squibhood: what causes it, why it happens to certain people. I even tried to combine it with some Muggle science—genetics and the like. There wasn't much of anything definitive on the matter, but I began to formulate my own theory, my own explanation based on a mixture of experience and study."

She had leaned forward slightly, and he was amused to note a tinge of excitement in her voice. He could now believe she's read all these books: he could believe she'd spent her childhood wrapped in pages and diagrams. He recognized the signs.

"You see, there's no reason why Squibs, children of fully magical parents, should not possess magic themselves. Magic acts like a sort of recessive trait. After all it can emerge in the children of Muggles: but wouldn't the parents—or at least one of them-- have magical abilities? To pass the magical trait on, the parent would have to have magic as well but dormant-- to be a sort of Muggle Squid of sorts."

He merely shifted his sore spine once more.

She didn't even notice him, lost in explanation. "So Squibs, like parents of Muggleborns, must have magic but no ability to channel it. No ability to focus it outside themselves. I guessed this must be the case with me also. I imagined the magic built up inside me, flowing through my blood—a bit like wine. I decided I would attempt to feel it: to focus it in my mind. My book orders then turned to mental magic, disciplines like Occlumency. Disciplines that involved feeling the magic that must, I felt, be inside. And, to my surprise, for once, I actually _felt_ something."

Despite himself, he was listening intently. The concept was…novel. Occlumency trained the mind to use magic like a mental shield or an internal patronus. Exercises used to learn Occlumency often involved turning the reflexes of spell casting inward: one reason, of course, most witches and wizards found it so challenging. Like trying to write with the left hand when you'd only ever used your right.

"I felt what I knew must be magic. And I began to be able –very slowly—to control it. All inside, of course. But it was something. Then, on a bit of a whim, I spent my fourteenth birthday money on any titles the bookseller could find with 'mind magic' in the title. The post came with five titles: three in Occlumency, one about non-verbal spell casting, and one about divination. And that was the one that changed everything."

Fingers twined in fingers as she hurried over her own words. He watched her sparking eyes closely: she certainly was tenacious. And clever. _To a degree_.

"From the first second I opened that book –the one, incidentally, that met so violently with the back of your head—from that first moment, it all made sense to me. When I focused my mind, I could _see_ it. For the first time, I could see the magic working inside. Tea leaves, constellations, scrying mirrors, the throwing of sodding Muggle dice. But there was one thing I knew I had to try—far more than anything else. And for that I had to sneak back to Diagon Alley. I needed tarot cards."

"You—went to Diagon Alley? By yourself?"

She shrugged nonchalantly, but he could decipher the discomfort beneath. She had been afraid to go back. To go back and face the memory.

"Y-yes. I snuck out, like any good teenager. And, no, I didn't—even bother trying to look for Mum. I had no idea where she was and…the flat had been annexed by a herbalist shop. Anyway, I visited Madam Fortuna's and bought a tarot deck that set me back several months of book ordering. But I needed a very special deck. The quality of the cards effects the quality of the reading. The cards they carry in the Muggle world are poor substitutes, mass-printed on bleached, chemical paper. No magic at all. No _presence_. So, I found the perfect set. Unique, used many, many times. Beautiful. Incredible. I was so…excited."

"Until…?" he interjected, and, when she furled her brow: "Occlumency maybe, but I can still read faces."

She turned her eyes away as if to be sure. "Unfortunately, I went to Diagon Alley on rather a busy day. And, as I was strolling, intending just to…pass by our old flat…just to be sure…a very familiar gentleman was leaving Borgin's. Accompanied by his—young son."

Wine soured in his stomach, all acidic lurch. "Lucius?"

"Yes, damn it. I practically ran straight into the boy," she sighed, winded, as if she'd just collided with the young Malfoy all over again. "I excused myself. I didn't look at him –at my father—but I-I couldn't help but stare, for the splittest of seconds, at the boy. My brother. Tiny, hateful face. My own damned eyes looking back at me. Then—I ran. I ran like hell, and I never went back."

"Did he recognize you?"

"I—don't know. I don't _think_ so. But I did…feel something. A little jolt up my arm. As when I—when you touched me." Her throat rumbled, and her fingers plucked at the folds of her camisole. "Anyway, I went straight home and read the cards for my mum. I saw the murder. And I thought about that boy. It was a—jarring day."

"Indeed." He considered that jolt a moment, perhaps a byproduct of the botched spell buried in her flesh. He considered what it would mean for Lucius to know she was alive. Probably not much, ultimately. He might want to kill her, but, so long as he didn't know where to look, it would come to naught. If, however, he learned what she could do…

"I can read faces too, you know," she said, shifting as he had, betraying her own groaning muscles. "Those were my exact thoughts at the time. So, I redoubled my study of Occlumency. Determined that should my dearest dad ever track me down –or any of his old friends—that they should never see what I have seen or know what I know."

"About your mother?"

"Among…other things." She sniffed, kneading her neck. "And _that_ is where this line of inquiry ends. There's nothing more that the Headmaster could possibly need to know."

The wine was gone and had clearly evaporated from both their veins. He knew when he'd reached a wall: he was done. His muscles demanded adjournment as loudly as the crisp finality of the girl's voice. "Yes, I agree. I will return to Hogwarts and let Dumbledore know of the agreement," he said, unfolding his body with groans he was far too young to make. "If he agrees, we will meet for your contribution some time next week."

"Not here," she said simply. _Demanded, more like._

"No, I agree. I'm tiring of this place myself. I suggest my house. It's near here and it's much less—sunny."

"Sounds lovely."

"I will contact you with the address and details tomorrow. I'm afraid you'll have to endure a piece of owl post."

"One owl only. Nothing suspicious, if you please."

Looking at her, he felt the souring lurch again. She was smiling a wide, winding smile. It was a sure sign he needed to go. Immediately, before—

"Oh, there is _one_ more think."

He wilted, muscles unwinding back into his seat. It had come back to him in one flash, come too late. She had been holding something back. Another "one more thing." In some ways, he thought, she was as much Dumbledore as Malfoy.

_Serpent and unicorn, Severus. You forgot._

"I agreed to read the cards for…the Dark Lord—" Her strength wavered, as it always seemed to, over those words. "However, there is one obstacle to such a reading."

A growl through crooked teeth. "And that would be?"

She leaned back, returning to the easy posture she'd adopted earlier, languid, lazy power in the curve of her back. "Tarot decks, as I mentioned, effect the reading. They are…like windows. If you want to see the street below, a regular little bay window will do nicely." She indicated the sun-lined squares beside them. "If, however, you wish to see the details of a great vista –if you want to see the panorama of the furthest horizon—you'll need a very large, special window. And very clean glass."

He clenched his fists. He wished, for a flickering moment, that he could throw her through her damned panoramic window.

"The Headmaster is asking to see the broadest panorama imaginable—Fate. The Fate of many people. To make an accurate reading I will need a very specific, very powerful deck." The smile was gone. She spoke the words with the same breathy quiet she reserved for the Dark Lord's appellations. "The _Velius Malorum_. The tarot deck of the great sorceress Borgia."

Her look indicated that the name ought to strike him with force. She must have been disappointed then: he had never been a student of that art. In fact, he quite disdained it. He was, of course, familiar with the dark sorceress Borgia. She devised a number of ingenious –not to mention insidious—poisons he'd brewed during his Death Eater days. He could only assume whatever tarot artifact the lady had possessed was equally powerful—and dark.

"If you are looking to have the Headmaster invest in some pricey acquisition for you, I'm afraid you will be sorely disappointed."

She did not blink nor return the bite in his voice. "It would be quite an investment, I imagine. However, one cannot simply stroll into a Hogsmeade shop and purchase the _Velius._ It is one of a kind: and I've no idea where it is at the moment."

So—not only purchasing but questing as well. Why did everyone assume him to be their personal errand boy?

"I am not a Niffler, Miss Branch," he said, drawing himself taller in his seat, glaring down at her draped, lazy form. "The cards you possessed seemed more than adequate for your –investigation—of my own life. You will read You-Know-Who's fate just the same as mine: _that_ is the agreement, Miss Branch. Take it or not. The Headmaster has already set the terms."

The smallest of smiles tickled her lips, demure enough to stoke his rising rage. If there was one thing that could set a seemingly placid Severus Snape into fits of shaking snark, it was being manipulated. Feeling control of a situation slip from this long fingers…

"If you'll forgive my saying so, reading your cards and reading _his_ is an entirely different affair. You're life, for all its undoubted color and importance, is nonetheless somewhat more…commonplace."

Luckily for her, the small smile disappeared without a trace just moments before he decided that, wine and tragic pasts aside, he was not out of the race for a bit of confrontation. The ugly incident of their previous encounter had drifted from his mind for a time, but he could feel it returning as his irritation grew. He saw her face again, angled beneath his, Malfoy eyes driving into his overrun mind…

But anyone looking on would never have guessed the girl had ever smiled, had ever had the strength to even rise from her seat.

"Besides, it doesn't work. I've—tried before."

Sharp words melted from his tongue. He realized, fully and for the first time, what a power the girl lounging there, heavy-faced, truly had.

"You've—read the Dark Lord's cards—"

"I said I tried," she emphasized, suddenly an odd mixture of tension and repose. "Of course I tried. I may have left the wizarding world, but I'm still a witch. I still cared—and, of course, when the Mark became slightly visible again…well, the Headmaster clearly understands the need. To know why."

All four eyes present distinctly avoided the snake and skull glaring silent at her words.

"But, as I said, the cards I use, while very good, are simply not enough. I saw bits, pieces unconnected: like seeing a shadow and the sun. I could tell something was there, but the truth of the thing itself eluded me. To see the whole of it –as I did with you—there is only one deck still in existence with the recquisite power, inherent magic, and adequate scope. And that's the _Velius._" The wan smile peeked again, briefly. "Rather like trying to stir Veritaserum with a wooden spoon instead of a dragon's claw, to use an analogy you might understand."

Yes, yes. Put in those terms, he came dangerously close to believing her. After all, the cards must be like any other magical tool: the purity and the specifics of the tool were often every bit as important as the process that utilized them. As a Potions Master he could vouch for that more readily than most. He was beyond meticulous when it came to selecting ingredients or equipment. But it was not, he decided, unlike the careful fitting of wand to wizard. Each wizard needed a particular wand with particular properties and strengths that could help reveal or even determine his strongest skills.

But, despite the sense of it, he wouldn't let himself believe the truth of her request fully. This whole situation had already burdened him with the possibility of Occlumency lessons over the summer holidays. He didn't cherish the thought of sleuthing for dark artifacts on top of that. "Be that as it may: do you have _any_ idea where we might find this _Velius_?"

"Yes. I can tell you where to begin. Last I knew, it was in my mother's possession."

"Your—mother?" he spat, without thinking. A flash of her desperate search through Antigone Branch's final belongings resurfaced. She'd been looking for it, even then.

"Yes. It had belonged to my grandmother, a gift from Gridelwald. She was quite the admirer of Borgia, and he gave it to her as a congratulatory gift for her marriage. When she went to Azkaban, she gave it to my mother. However, since it was not among the knick-knacks the Headmaster brought, I can only assume it was no longer hers when she died. For all I know, she sold it to pay rent. She had no idea of its value."

He leaned back finally, relinquishing his height to the tired insistence of his back. There was absolutely no knowing where the cards could be now: the elder Branch had died six years before. In six years time, a dark artifact of any value would have made its way around the world through black market trade. The only lead he could immediately call to mind was Mundungus, and he mostly confined his trading to stolen cauldrons and amulets of particularly suspect effectiveness. Perhaps Borgin. Or any number of Knockturn Alley entrepreneurs. But this kind of artifact was esoteric, even for them. They generally preferred items with a bit more flash. Easier to move that way.

He stood suddenly, halting the turn of thoughts in place. He had not agreed to this: to playing spy and whispering in dark corners all over again. Besides, he couldn't go about asking questions without raising suspicions, certainly the last thing Dumbledore –or the girl for that matter—could want.

"I'll discuss the matter with the Headmaster. Until then, I believe, we will have to postpone any further—"

She was on her feet just as quickly, and he braced himself for an explosion.

But the girl standing before him was, once again, remarkably different from the one who had stared him down on their last encounter. Her eyes wide, her lips parted rather that clenched, her hand almost reaching out to touch his arm before retreating from propriety—she appeared desperate…pleading. It was, in its own way, more disconcerting than any amount of anger.

"Professor, please. Please, don't. I know—you don't—" She stopped, eyes reflecting the collection of her broken thoughts. "I need those Occlumency lessons. I know that. I also know that you… will find the _Velius_. I—saw it. But, please. Do not delay the lessons. It's vital, it's—I've already told you so much…"

He watched the silver dart, slight and quick beneath his gaze, trembling like memories in a pensieve. In the turbulent gray, her pupils, solid and midnight black, watched back, staring through in the way he imagined only a Seer's could.

"Why?" he growled down into her eyes, itching to push through them—to see what she had seen.

But something held him: something kept him dancing across the desperate surface of her gaze, transgressing no further. Something Severus Snape rarely admitted to in himself.

It was fear.

"Why—do you need them so immediately? You've waited years. You're sequestered and hidden here, and you must know I've no intention of…" He would not finish. Refused to admit anything while caught in her eyes.

Her hand succeeded this time, fingers light and uncertain on his arm. The peculiar jolt shuddered his bones, as if the strange mark was reaching out to him. He snatched himself from her, already reaching towards the door.

"The Dark Lord is alive, Snape."

She'd whispered, but somehow the sounds resonated, tolled through the sluggish, sunlit distance between them.

"He's alive, Professor. _That's_ why. And—he's coming."

He ventured only a brief glance back at her stormy, rooted gaze. He felt lost in it.

"It will be soon. That's why."

The locks clicked free, and Severus Snape disappeared with a low, heavy pop.

* * *

A/N: Sorry it has been so long since the last chapter. I started my first term of graduate school and, what with working full-time as well, it's proven a bit more time-consuming than I'd imagined. No time for Severus…it's tragic.

That being said, I've got an additional two chapters after this written. However, I'm so old-fashioned, I still write long hand and then type everything in. But I'll try and get them typed and edited asap.

Also, I'm looking for a patient, experienced beta to help me wade through these things. I get to where I can't see typos anymore…If you're interested, please let me know.

Next chapter: back in the "present." A little snippet before things begin in earnest.


	6. First You Have to Die

**_Chapter Six: _First You Have To Die**

_June, 1997_

For once, Lina Branch had drawn the curtains. He could tell even before he'd opened his eyes; the blackness had a quality of strain. It was fighting to hold the daylight—the bustling, inevitable signs of a world continuing to turn on its pitiless axis—to hold it back from the still, dark moment unfolding within.

It gave the room a weary feel, a familiar feel. For a brief second, he thought himself waking at Spinner's End, in all its accustomed if dreary comfort. But memory slammed back; memory always pounced without concern for the value of a minute's untainted peace.

Spinner's End was _gone._ Overrun. No doubt a heavily surveyed Ministry watch post. The strained curtains pushed indelicately against his mind.

In the murky half-dark, Lina Branch's white skin seemed a strange source of light. She was curled several feet away, on a rocking chair, book cracked open across her lap. Memories jumbled for a moment, and he half-expected her to reach for a glass of wine.

But a far humbler ceramic mug sat beside her now, doubtlessly couching that disgusting tea she drank. She had not noticed him wake and continued running gray eyes across the page, free fingers first shuffling absently through the folds of her clothing, then running across the contours of the chair.

She was worried; she was afraid. And, judging from the sluggish progress of her eyes, she was likewise distracted. Whether by what he'd shown her or by what he'd asked of her, he couldn't guess. Either way, it was because of him.

_You have that effect on people, Severus._

He pushed an arm beneath himself, straightening from the crunched, tortuous position he'd adopted at some point during slumber. His back and arm wailed in pain, drawing a brisk breath through clenched teeth. The natural painkillers and numbness of the moment had given way, leaving the full bite of reality square across his shoulders.

Lina snapped back into the present, fingers still, eyes sharp. As she looked at him, he saw something new in her gaze. Pity.

_Disgusting._

His stores of patience—in fact, his stores of everything other than fatigue and restlessness—were remarkably low, even relative to their normally depressed levels. He couldn't accept pity now. The girl had seen him crack more often than any other person, with the exception of—Albus. And even the Headmaster had given up the pity. She should have known better.

He ran a hand across the protuberance of a shoulder blade. His skin revolted in tattered shrieks of pain. "We need to proceed immediately."

The growl of his voice managed to erase those slight signs of pity from her face. "I would love to oblige you, Severus, but I'm afraid this is going to take a bit of preparation. If I'm going to give you the best possible reading—and you're going to need it, it seems—then I have to be adequately prepared. For once, I'm afraid you'll have work on _my_ timetable."

"I don't remember so much preparation last time," he grumbled, sitting up and wiping a thick layer of sweat from his face. It was bloody hot, but he knew better than to open a window, even slightly. He couldn't handle the daylight—not now.

"Fortunately, I did not have you looking over my shoulder the last time," she sighed, closing her book and using it to fan herself. "This is the Veritaserum of divination, _Professor_. It takes as long as it takes." Her gaze caught on his torn back. "Besides, you need to wash up and heal your wounds." It took her only two strides before she reached him, fingers winding past his robes to examine the swollen skin beneath. "They're looking a bit grotty, if you ask me. Have a shower and heal them while I fix something to eat."

Her touch felt hot and discomforting, and he separated from it almost instantly. "I'm not hungry, damn it, nor do I feel the short time I have free should be spent attending to matters of personal hygiene. I'm going to check Draco; you keep 'preparing' so we can get this over with."

She blocked his path, doing her best to appear intimidating with her eyes no higher than his chin. "Severus Snape, don't you dare play the prickly Potions Bastard with me. You're in my house; you need _me_. I just checked Draco not five minutes ago. He's sleeping like the—like a baby. I won't force-feed you, but I also won't be able to do anything useful with you hovering over me reeking of sweat and pus. The shower is through _there_." She pointed a very firm finger down the corridor behind the stairs. "Towels and everything. Now let's, as you say, _get this over with_."

She did not linger to ensure his compliance, instead grabbing her book firmly and storming past him into the adjoining room. The force of her exit left his robes billowing in her wake.

He searched himself for anger—unsuccessfully. Odd though it seemed, he almost felt relief. It was nice to have the burden of control lifted, if only briefly. He could allow himself to behave how he felt: empty, numb, and automatic.

The cold water was bracing, especially spraying across the feverish tears of his back. He enjoyed showering, contrary, certainly, to what many had surmised. And now, at this moment, the ritual was welcome—a lovely distraction from what lay ahead. He scoured each inch of skin almost raw in a meticulous, single-minded obsession to scrub every bit of Hogwarts dirt from his pores. He emerged from the shower as wet and scrubbed-pink as a newborn. Another comforting illusion, he mused, running his wand across his robes, repairing the rips and removing the grime and stench with matching attention.

He met his own dark eyes in the mirror, watching his reborn self with repulsion.

_But it _is_ an illusion, Severus. To be born again, first you have to die._

With a growl, he decided to leave the wounds on his back. _One step closer in that direction, after all._

She was waiting at the dining table, book open but unread before her. Her hands were wrapped about the ceramic mug, her eyes turned to the drawn curtains, legs tucked beneath her, crossed at the ankles. As he neared, she didn't turn to meet him, instead closing her eyes and taking a long breath through her nose.

She smirked. "Much better. No more stink of Potions cupboard and Quidditch locker room." Her pursed lips met that of the mug, careful and deliberate. It was several long minutes before she opened her eyes and returned his gaze.

"Busily 'preparing'?" he muttered, lifting the abandoned book up to her face before slamming it closed and flinging it to the far end of the table. The harsh water might not have revitalized him, but it had certainly washed a layer of nostalgic distraction away. He was no longer in any mood to linger or play at her stalling games.

He was no fool. He knew she did not want to do what he'd asked. Not only was the act itself repulsive and, as he'd previously witnessed, extremely draining physically; but she knew, just as he did, that as soon as the cards were read, they would disappear. They would leave and return to _him_, the source of it all.

He was not accustomed to the feeling of being—_kept_. Most people skirted his presence, disposed themselves amiably but quickly. But he knew—for she was not trying to hide it—that she was not anxious to be rid of him. After all, it would be unnerving to fill his mind with all the Dark Lord's secrets just before packing him off to Death Eater Central. Nor could she be eager to relive the stark coldness of their last parting, to be used and tossed aside. No, worse. Locked away and forgotten. She was trying desperately to hold back the inevitable result of fear and uncertainty that came along with everything the situation demanded of her.

_Come now, Severus. There's more than that. You know it; you both do. There is no Occlumency strong enough to shield those thoughts from _yourself

She was hoping for something before he went. A sign, an acknowledgment, some resolution—there'd been no time for that before.

And he could not offer her any of that.

"Lina." He said this simply, pulling out the seat beside her with the same purposeful precision she'd shown sipping at her tea. "We truly have very little time. I have no way of knowing when Draco and I will be called. And we must go when that happens. It's vital that you have completed the reading before that. Regardless of—whatever else you might—"

He trailed off as his forced-soft voice drowned in the incongruous clang of her laughter.

"Oh, Severus," her words rippled out only when her chuckles allowed. Her eyes, so dull before, were shining despite the muddy light surrounding them. She pulled the book back towards herself, tucking her smile, with difficulty, into her face. "As I was attempting to explain to you, this lovely task requires a good deal of preparation; not all of it involves pouring over pages and diagrams." She mocked him, shaking the book as he had, smirking wide. "Part of that preparation involves some attempt to center my mind—to clear it and ready my inner sight. So, please, don't trouble yourself. No need to worry that I'm _pining_." She stood, walking around the wall and into the kitchen. "But I do truly appreciate your gallant and sincere words of comfort." Even out of sight he could hear her voice ruffle with laughter.

Despite himself and the twinge of hurt pride her words stirred, he couldn't help but smirk right back. It was a perfect response; in fact, he could hear himself responding in precisely the same tone. The offer of sensitivity was never genuine to one of his ilk. It was merely a way of saying, _You're weaker than I_. And so, of course, any acknowledgement of such sentiments was unthinkable.

Lina Branch might never have attended Hogwarts, but it was subtle, familiar reactions like that which told him precisely where the Sorting Hat would have put her.

She'd settled back down to a demure smile when she reemerged, mug steaming afresh. "I promise, Severus, I will be prepared in a few hours. All that's left is to prepare myself physically and mentally," she sighed, retaking her seat. "Which I'm sure you can understand is a bit of a feat at the present moment."

He grunted in assent. In truth, it was precisely what he should be doing himself. Centering, preparing. But reining in his mind was proving more difficult than ever before. And, in the circumstances he'd found himself stuck in before, that was saying quite a lot.

"Then I'll read the cards, and you and young Malfoy can be on your merry." Each syllable was flat—a testament for him, proof of her detached dedication. "Until then, perhaps you should rest and heal those damned wounds."

This earned her a fresh scowl and quirked eyebrow. He was used to her production of strange, unsaid knowledge, but he refused to believe the scratches on his back were something the Cosmos felt she should divine.

"I'm a doctor, Severus. I can smell it from a mile off." Her breath drew tiny waves across the surface of her tea. "Besides, I know you well enough."

"I don't wish to heal them," he said, taking a moment to dwell upon the stretched-fresh pain as he inhaled. "Battle scars can only work in my favor when I return."

She shifted, watching him with unmasked disgust.

"Besides, a little external pain keeps me awake and aware. And it's only just," he grumbled, shifting himself as well, desperately wishing he had something more to do. He hated this waiting. He'd always hated it. Stretches of unoccupied time only encouraged the sort of introspection and intense worry that could get him killed.

_Perhaps_, his mind chirped with almost morbid hopefulness. _Perhaps. To be born again, Severus—_

"Oh, your gloom is magnificent," she sighed at him, mid-thought. "I wouldn't want to rob you of the strain of martyrdom, of course. But may I suggest a little Muggle solution? Just to keep nasty infections at bay. It's a bit difficult to be a sacrificial lamb if you perish of Septicaemia first."

He glared at her, but she did not quail.

"I promise, just a bit of peroxide. Undetectable to your Death Eater pals. And there'll be _plenty_ of soul-humbling pain."

She grinned, apparently taking his silence as assent. Before he realized it, she'd brought in a strange brown bottle and several gauze swabs. He felt her fingers sweep aside his damp hair, strands tickling at his cheeks. Her hand rested a moment on his shoulder before he understood.

"You know, this probably would be a bit more effective on the _actual_ wounds."

Though he had not thought it possible, he felt his skin grow warmer. _Outmaneuvered again, Snape_. How would he last even ten minutes in the Circle if his mind couldn't even see through the machination of a Squib?

"Come on, Severus. Doctor, remember?" She shook the bottle as if somehow it confirmed this statement. "I promise. I'll _try_ to control myself. Besides, it will help me relax. Feels a bit more clinical, more routine."

The Squib in question would have been Slytherin, that's the difference. And she had strategies he never worried about in the Circle.

With the requisite amount of grumbling, he loosened the top several buttons of his robes, allowing them to collapse to the bottom of his shoulders. The air razed his flesh delicately.

He'd expected some reaction from her as she slowly unveiled the raked black and brown of his back, but she merely proceeded, fingers dexterous and soft as the corded muscles tensed beneath her touch.

"How--?" she asked, rolling open the lid of the bottle with a snap.

"Hippogriff."

"Ahh."

The heat of the wounds clashed suddenly with the cool of the Muggle liquid. He could hear a very slight sizzling followed by a less than slight crackle of renewed pain. It was as if she'd sprayed more of that fire and spice concoction directly into his veins. He jerked away and hissed.

"It's supposed to do that," she replied flatly, drawing him back roughly. "Penitence, after all."

He gritted his teeth and surrendered to the sizzling track of her hands down his spine. She was clearly skilled with the art, never letting the sting peak without the numbing cool of cotton close behind. Minutes passed in peaks of pain and numbness—as they always did, he supposed. He could feel her relaxing, growing still with each dab at the flesh. He imagined her face, bent on her work, damp and delicate fingertips brushing open layers of skin, lip half-bitten in concentration. She did that when concentrating, he remembered. Her pale eyes grew unwavering and fierce, and her bottom lip curled under the grip of teeth. It was one of the few looks that he'd never seen in her Malfoy predecessor. It was too sincere.

"The last few years have been—_hard _on you," she said quietly, and he felt a bare finger trace an uncut section of flesh on his neck. He couldn't suppress a slight quiver. "More scars, I see."

He said nothing, shaking the ticklish sensation away gruffly.

"I—I saw that Black died. I can only guess at the circumstances." Her tone was matter-of-fact, but he could smell the concern lingering beneath. "I saw—when you returned to him. The—Dark Lord."

"You've been reading my cards?" he snapped suddenly, wrenching from beneath her. "You—"

She pulled him back again just as harshly, seemingly unfazed by his irritation. "Of course I did. Seemed a hell of a lot easier than popping round for a friendly chat."

As a fresh eruption of sting bloomed across his back, something clicked. "Is that—how you knew? About Albus and—"

"Yes."

"So you did not speak to him—"

"I did. But the details of the conversation were a bit, er, _sketchy_ at the time." Cool water on a damp cloth blended with the heat of pain.

"How did he contact you? Even he didn't know the address here, and he never mentioned—"

"What are you going to do now, Severus?" The interruption was jarring, especially coupled with the retreat of her touch from his skin. His mind—like his back—hummed with the overwhelming sensation of emptiness.

She pulled the cloth up over his shoulders and rounded his numb back to gaze directly into his tensed face. "What are you going to do now that you've left the Order and have no one but the Dark Lord to turn to?"

Suddenly the healing heat of his back was nothing compared to the fiery rage expanding through his gut. He concentrated very closely on fastening the buttons beneath his chin. "Funny, I thought what I was going to do was _your_ area of expertise."

"The future is a path worn by the footsteps of choice," she answered, quiet. "The choice you make when you cross my thresholdcould change the course of everything I see today. I—need to know."

Somehow, inexplicably, the solemnity of her smooth-cut features ignited that rage, and it burst the dam of his gut, spreading like fire in his blood. It was a memory, again. Remembered rage, as he'd parried curse after curse, running, exhausted, hateful thoughts open wide on their hinges, close at his heels.

Even she didn't know. Even the woman whose damnable Malfoy eyes could pierce the expanse of Time. _Even she can't help but fear…_

Sometimes it felt easier to be a Death Eater. On that side of the line lay certainty.

"Prepare yourself, Miss Branch," he spat, standing and allowing the full weight of his anger to slide down his hooked nose. "For once in my life, my choices are my own damned business."

_And make of that,_ he added mentally, _whatever you like_. _There's nothing more frightening, after all, than Severus Snape making his own choice._

Face still stoic, she merely retook her seat, hands finding their cradled position about the curved white of her mug. "I know, Severus. I just thought perhaps you ought to be reminded. It's the same choice all over again."

Words crackled at the heated root of his tongue but refused to meet the strained, gray air. It was too much of Albus to countenance. He didn't want to be reminded of anything. He wanted a few hours in this murky limbo, disconnected from past and future. He didn't want to be _reminded_.

He turned away, pushing distance from her, pummeling the thoughts at their source. But they had broken free, a thousand reminders of his past choice, sharp and hot as iron on his skin.

It was bloody hot. His whole body burned, flaming inside like a phoenix ablaze, melting into ash. _Rebirth, resurrection_, the Headmaster had said over Fawkes' pyre. Perhaps that was what she'd meant too, damn her.

_Tut, Severus. To be born again—_

He braced himself firmly against the arm of the sofa.

_To be born again, first you have to die._

It might be the only choice left, one way or another.

He lay down, praying for that chance, as the pall of his past, broken free, dragged heavy across his overwrought mind.

* * *

A/N: I must first note that the line "to be born again, first you have to die" is not mine and has been shamelessly lifted from one of my favorite novels, _The Satanic Verses_ by Salman Rushdie. I admit to my literary theft and justify it only by saying that I couldn't help myself here.

I've also somehow managed to hoodwink the lovely Ms. Whitehound into betaing for me. A hearty "thank you" to her for her help. We can all thank her for the remarkable absence of typos and Americanisms in the following chapters. I accept full responsibility for any and all lingering errors and inconsistencies…

Hopefully the updating will be more frequent for the rest of the fic, as things have quieted down for me in the wake of the holidays. Please r/r if you're still around…


	7. Building Blackness

**_Chapter Seven:_ Building Blackness**

_June, 1991_

Lina Branch slid indelicately to the floor, back pressed against a bookcase, head limp between her knees. Her breath was as ragged as the books that threatened to fall from the sudden impact of spine on spines.

"Stop, Snape. Enough," she panted, closing her eyes in an apparent attempt to rally her strength for one more desperate but very weak attempt to push him from her mind.

He retreated, watching her closely and with mounting frustration. It was odd to force himself to pull back; with most witches or wizards, when no mental defense was possible, a magical defense was mounted. He'd sent Albus flying across the room during their lessons, when the Headmaster appeared too close to memories that he very much considered his alone.

But Lina Branch had no way to fight back. She had, during their first, tense trial, attempted to throw a fist at the sizable target of his nose. She'd thankfully succeeded in breaking only his concentration. He'd moved a large table between them now to discourage any further Muggle methods of retaliation.

And so, excepting the occasions she managed a decent mental defense, he had possessed very intimate freedom with her thoughts, feelings, and memories. He had seen enough to piece together the girl's many weaknesses—to sketch a decent picture of her. This was clearly affecting her ability to repulse his attacks more effectively as well as exhausting her both mentally and physically.

But it was only fair. After all, it was precisely the method the Dark Lord used, searching for the vulnerabilities, tearing straight to the most secretive, the most meaningful. Besides, the girl had seen his past in just as much gruesome, discomfiting detail. _Quid pro quo, of a sort._

She had managed to lift herself onto the dingy sofa, hands predictably caught up in the usual, disconcerted pilgrimage through her hair. Despite his disapproving stare, she rested her feet on the coffee table before allowing her head to collapse backwards, eyes pressed resolutely away from his impatience.

"I can't do anymore today," she sighed, without a single move of limb. "My mind's spilt out inside my skull."

With a growl, he allowed himself to sit across from her, conceding to a slight fatigue of his own. She'd lasted longer today than ever before; but he'd seen more as well.

They came in flashes, seeping through chinks in her weak wall of defense. He could generally work at the chinks, until it all came flooding out in a deluge of emotion.

Today it had been a manic mix. A black-clad Muggle woman yelling at the girl as a classroom of her peers looked on. An older Lina standing over a corpse at what he assumed to be Muggle hospital, staring into wide-open and lifeless eyes. Young again, this time hunched over a mixing bowl of what he guessed to be the abortive attempt at Hair-Growing elixir she'd described. Older, staring into the face of a young Draco Malfoy. Very young next, her honey-eyed mother smearing Mimesisalve down the girl's forearm. His own face in the market as she glanced at the pale pink of the Mark.

And then the one that had forced her to the floor. A brief flash of a younger Lucius Malfoy, offering the girl a Lizard Lolly while wantonly stroking the breast of Antigone Branch.

It was the first time he'd felt sorry—felt himself trespassing too far.

Apparently, she agreed.

Her eyes were turned unrelentingly to the blank of the ceiling, but she was somewhere far away. It was one of the unfortunate side effects of learning Occlumency, reliving the past. But once mastered, it ensured an ability to detach from those memories that he'd found absolutely vital to survival.

He opened his mouth, searching for some way to draw her back. "Why was the Muggle teacher yelling at you?"

She did not seem to appreciate the attempt, keeping her gaze quite far from his. "It was at school. A, er, religious school. She didn't appreciate my choice of reading material." Her fingers had left her hair, now working at the knotted base of her neck. "Thomas Gregori's _History of Wizarding Europe._"

"Ahh," he said, not bothering to keep the disgust from his voice. As usual, he supposed, there was some kernel of truth to that old Slytherin prejudice after all.

Her breath slowed through the next silent minutes, and he solemnly considered how best to proceed with this farce of instruction. On the surface, it appeared she was making no progress at mental defense. Granted, the sort of Legilimency he was practicing was far more violent, invasive, and persistent than when he had first attempted to enter her mind. She could block that fairly effectively. He was unsure, however, if her ad hoc Squib method would ever be enough to fight back true Legilimency, and he knew she must surely be worrying along the same lines. But he could do nothing else. She wanted skills that would protect her from the most infamous Legilimens of the age. His strongest attempts at penetration were nothing short of half-hearted compared to the Dark Lord's.

"I think I need—a bit of a nap," she sighed, finally drawing her eyes back down to his. She had the same guarded, cold look as when he'd first seen her in the market. A quiet, solemn mask pulled over undoubted chaos. She was looking to be excused, looking for a bolthole. "Could we continue this next week? If, that is, you see any point in continuing at all."

"We should continue now. I do not wish to spend the entirety of my holidays with this task hanging over me."

Her chuckle was dry and detached and wholly Slytherin. "Nor do I. But there's no point in putting more time into it today. My mind is feeling thoroughly ravaged, if you must know."

He frowned. "You've not been practicing enough. You're still unable to clear your mind adequately."

This tack was clearly not going to help any mind-clearing or emotional detachment. Her eyes, which had been so dull, now smoldered. Her slouched spine suddenly jerked taut. "I _have_ been practicing, _Professor_," she hissed, leaning towards him, to be sure her previously slippery gaze fastened onto his, unwavering. "I've done every exercise, read every text, invested hours of my own to your little 'homework' assignments. I'm not one of your apathetic students. I need to learn this; I _must_ learn it. My life could be at stake. So don't talk to me like I'm some snot-nosed first year who failed an exam." Her anger seemed to have run out of steam—or perhaps she'd merely run out of strength. But her voice continued in its firm and certain register. "I'm giving this everything I bloody well can. So, either I'm simply incapable of this, or you should actually teach me something that _works_."

He felt the familiar tremor of anger attacking his bones. "Perhaps, then, you are merely incapable."

She did not react at all how he'd envisioned. He'd expected a matched bite, the return of spite for spite. He'd expected a tirade and a storming out and a delightful, quiet evening spent devising the most effective means for breaking the news of failure to Dumbledore.

Instead, the spark in her eyes extinguished, and her body crumpled back into a defeated ball. "Yes. Perhaps. It wouldn't be the first time."

_Bloody hell._ A stab of guilt jostled now alongside the gnawing of anger. Of course she was right. This wasn't some lazy, dunderheaded student who railed against the instructor when her half-hearted effort proved insufficient. No, this was far from her first bout with unsalvageable failure.

He closed his own eyes, far too aware of the clamoring of his emotions. He breathed deep, disconnecting, compartmentalizing. He needed cool objectivity for this. There was no sense in letting himself be tugged between anger and guilt and Merlin knew what else over this girl and her ridiculous—

"There!" she exclaimed, shattering the black desert of his eyelids. "That, right there! _That's_ what I need to learn. Enough damn texts on picturing my emotions as balloons floating away. How the hell do _you _do it?"

He parted lips, expecting the sharp words to bark forth, but, instead, his mind caught on the idea. He no longer thought of _how_ he managed it. He merely _did_. But once he'd had a method. Once he'd had a way to build that black emptiness on command.

He let his mind sift backwards, touching those stolen late-night lessons in Dumbledore's office. He'd been slumped in defeat, head spinning, eyes running close on the bright silhouette of a sleeping Fawkes. He'd just seen a particularly violent memory of his father. His mother's unconscious body as he ran his wand over the bruise blooming over her forehead. And he'd thought, _Damn him. Fucking Tobias Snape. I wish he'd just disappear from my mind; I wish he'd just never _been. He'd closed his eyes and watched as the picture of his ugly, apish father faded, leaving a beautiful, numb hollow. That was the first time—the first time he'd managed the feeling. Absolute emptiness of memory.

That had been it, his secret. The method that by now had been reduced to reflex. To slowly picture himself unutterably alone in his life.

He watched her again, unsure how to teach her any of that. It was a sore little personal wound, and he had no joy at the idea of opening any part of his psyche up to probing eyes. She saw far too much already.

But she was watching him, too, gray stare already dissecting, as if his skull was a crystal ball. She was not masking the plea nor the desperate fear of failure in her eyes. She wanted his help.

_How disgusting_, he told himself. But he knew, deep down, what he really meant was: _how disconcerting._

"Snape—Severus, please. If you know something that you're not telling me…"

His mind finished for her: _then bloody well get on with it._

"You've seen—some of what's, er, on my mind. Luckily for us both you haven't seen everything," she almost whispered, but her tone threatened him not to ask what else was tucked away in the corners of memory. No doubt some mysteries of the future she didn't deign to entrust to him. "But he _will_ see everything, Severus. He will if I fall into his hands. If there's anything, you—"

She fell off, apparently continuing the dire predictions in the bone walls of her own mind. Her eyes traveled, slow and dull, elsewhere. She was looking at something unseen; and it was clearly horrible.

_Damn it._ Damn these prophets with their soft golden words that wrapped about his throat like a noose. He'd heard a prophecy before, all those same deep-purple tones. They'd changed everything. They'd ruined him and saved him. Three corpses would have followed those words—a bizarre ellipsis of death.

_Not this time. _Prophecies were dangerous business, floating atop the brains of helpless twits like Sibyll Trelawney. There'd be no leak this time; no words eked out to be carried off to _him_ by some foolish bastard. He would build the walls high and impenetrable—or try and help her build them, at any rate.

"Get up," he barked, practically dragging her to her feet and to the spot where they'd faced one another, mind to mind.

"Alright, close your eyes."

She looked up at him warily.

"Just _do it_," he snapped, moving behind her only when her pale eyelids slid reluctantly shut.

"Now, this is what worked for me. Concentrate, and don't let your ridiculous mind wander."

A muscle along her jaw tightened as if she were suppressing an ocean of insults behind her teeth.

"Relax," he said, softer, tapping the tensed cheek but sure not to allow the same bite in his voice. _Low and silk, Severus. She won't be able to do this if she's preoccupied with what a bastard you are._

He shifted imperceptibly closer to her ear. Her hair smelled vaguely of soap and spice. He let the scent tickle his nose, calming his voice even further until it became the hypnotic, baritone hum he knew worked odd effects on the nerves of its recipients.

"Now, picture your father."

The tense twitch returned, punctuated by a sharp intake of breath. "I don't think _that_ is going to help me clear my mind."

"Don't speak; just do it."

He waited a few long moments, trying to imagine the construct of her imagination. Her conjured Lucius was doubtlessly different from anything he'd have pictured. Younger but more imposing, more icily paternal. When he tried to picture Malfoy, he saw nothing but black moments stolen behind mask and hood; despite years of acquaintance, despite boyhood pranks and late-night soirees full of cognac and conversation, he would never see Lucius any other way.

_Concentrate, Severus. This is her exercise, not yours._

He took another breath, full of soap and spice.

"Now picture your mother. And your Muggle parents. Your young half-brother. Your most hated school teacher. Your first lover. Your last lover. Your—"

"Slow _down_," she whisper-barked, clenching her eyes a moment and biting her lip as if trying to catch up. The white unblemished skin of her throat shivered with breath.

"Just picture all the people who have ever made you feel weak," he finished, more than aware of the insinuating vibrations of his voice upon the well of her ear. A tiny spot of pulse along her jaw registered his closeness with a visible squirm.

"Now, look at him. Look at Lucius, right in the face."

Beneath their covers, her eyes jerked.

"Now get rid of him," he growled, feeling the sadistic undercurrent of his speech undercutting the soothing melody like a sudden, rumbling tear of bass.

"Kill—him?" she stammered, barely speaking, clearly resisting the urge to turn at the suggestion.

"No. No. That is too lenient, too easy. To kill him is to admit his power. No—you are his judge. You control him. Merely _get rid_ of him. Banish him from existence. Deny him even the importance of being."

Her swallow seemed very loud, crashing against the close silence of his face. He studied her, every minute turn and lift and stillness. He knew instantly when she'd understood—when she'd succeeded. White teeth released their hold on her pressed-pink lip.

"Good. Now, do the same with her, with your mother. You—"

"Shh," she barely seemed to manage, as if lost in the process. He watched for several moments of spice and soap as she proceeded. He imagined her tumultuous mind, each canvas-flat face fading from around her, executed from existence.

"It's so—black."

"Yes," he whispered, moving soundlessly from beside her, pulling his wand out with the merest rustle of robes. "That is where the power of Occlumency comes into focus. It is black; they are nothing. You are alone. You are whatever I want to see. Do you see it? What I want to see? Do you understand the power of denying it all?"

She only breathed deep and strong.

"Now, defend yourself. _Legilimens_!"

Yes, it was definitely different. Pushing through the snapped open gray, past the thin veils of flesh and energy, he felt lost for a moment—dropped in the gut of a great labyrinth. The walls were immovable cold stone, and his own voice—his own presence—echoed back at him with all the intensity of his attempts to break through. He pushed harder, and the walls breathed but did not crumble. Desperate, sadistic, lost, he gripped her face, searching for something.

The memory was flat and nonsensical. A picture, a man hanging upside-down from a cross. Emotion trickled then surged: _hateamusementrespectfear_ and—

She jerked away, and it was gone.

"You—touched me," she complained, stepping back but no longer appearing disheveled, exhausted. Her eyes flickered, calm, on his.

"Yes. He will do the same, when he sees the Occlumency," he sighed, feeling slightly dizzy. "It is not enough to be empty, to block. You must allow him to see illusions in that emptiness. To look at the black and see what _you_ want him to. You fill the hollow space with lies."

She blinked and sifted her hair through long fingers.

"I still broke through. I saw and felt. A hint of something real, and a hint of emotion. You're still holding on to something, to someone."

Eyes darted from his.

"Try again. Let it—"

"Shh," she interrupted again, already in waking sleep, rebuilding her defenses. It went more quickly this time.

"Well, get on with it then," she growled, finally, this time throwing her eyes wide open as if in challenge. He could tell by the still ferocity of her gaze that she was tasting the beginnings of victory.

"_Legilimens!_"

The maze was gone. They were proper hallways now; white tiled floors, lined with doors and uniform windows, thin, white curtains pulled. Florescent light buzzed. Several wheelchairs and trolleys lay empty in dark alcoves. Muggle hospital again. _Interesting._

He pushed open a door, and a bright lamp soaked his mind. She was standing over a still form, face half-obscured by tears. She pushed them away, cheeks flat, colorless. She muttered something to the man, as if expecting the deathly stiff lips to speak. Her pale hand trembled over unresponsive skin. The emotional schema rolled forth then, but this time it was controlled. _Sorrow. Shock. _And he saw instantly—she let him see. This was her Muggle father.

The next door led into a cramped flat. She was young, smallish gray eyes turned on a chocolate frog that was perched, breathing and croaking, on her shoulder. A tall, lean women traipsed past, scooping the sweet from her shoulder and biting it in half with a mischievous grin. The girl laughed, as the attendant emotion presented, and the sound of it was almost maddeningly loud, scratching through ever inch of his brain.

He fell back, blinking once more at the still face of Lina Branch.

"That was—different," he said, finally, feeling a vertiginous pull of fatigue drag him down into an armchair.

A smile broke her severe features, and the paleness of her skin seemed to shine. "Different? Is that all you've got to say?"

His head fell forward, throbbing from the effort. "It was an—improvement."

"Improvement? I did it! Not a single damn one of those things ever happened. They were just, you know, twisted moments. In real life, you know, my mum actually told me off for getting chocolate on my robes. And my dad is fine. I was using the memory of his—are you okay?"

_No_, he thought to himself, rubbing briefly at his temples. He'd never pushed his Legilimency so hard. He'd never had cause to push against a wall so firm. But it was more. His own mind, apart from feeling fatigued, felt prized open. It was not a normal effect of the process. Something about the girl had not only defended; it had fought back. Her mind, so overflowing with unreleased magic, had eked upstream, fought its way up the synapses.

He felt as if he'd been stung by a nasty jinx. He blinked several times.

But he damn sure wasn't going to tell her that. Her face was already a Malfoyish study in smugness. "I am fine, Miss Branch, he sighed, pushing against the swell of nausea and regaining his confident height. "I am merely exceedingly bored. Be glad; if that's all the Dark Lord should happen to see, you'll be a heroine. You'll bore him to death."

To his surprise, she laughed—a deeper, more mature version of the young girl with the frog. "Professor, if I didn't know better, I'd say you resented your student's success."

"On the contrary, Miss Branch. I am overjoyed," he said, crossing the room to pour himself an admittedly shaky finger of whiskey. "Your success means that this pedagogical farce is now at an end."

"Not quite, Professor," she replied, watching him toss the deep, still liquid down his throat. "I'll need one more lesson, I'm afraid. I need to be sure I can create some—er, as you say, less _boring_ memories. And if we're going to finish this properly, I'll need you to ravage me."

Whiskey scraped down his esophagus, spluttering in his lungs.

"Mentally, of course." She was clearly enjoying her success far too much. "I need to know I can fashion some lies to cover the more—dramatic events of my memory. That is what he would do, what he would seek out, is it not? And, you said he sometimes—grabs the—victim. You'll have to…prepare me for that."

He drowned any answer in another burning draw of spirits.

"Besides, you still haven't found the _Velius_, have you?"

_Damn and hell_. Her voice was echoing somehow, mixing with the liquor and the nausea. Was the connection still open? Could she feel it? Hear him?

He was not up to the argument. This was enough. Surely, more than. She made good points, of course. Success at Occlumency meant more than constructing basic lies. She would have to draw on real emotions, real events—things that a Dark Lord would want to see. And again, he had seen it many times: he _did_ have physical methods of throwing a victim off. But Snape had no intention of trying those with the girl.

This time the nausea was from memory. "Good day, Miss Branch."

A chuckle, beating on his brain. "Okay, okay. I've worn out my welcome, I see. I'll leave you here to skulk in priv—"

But he'd already picked her up by the arm, ushering her towards the door. With a deep breath, and trying to ignore her staring back at him across the threshold, he rebuilt the black. He watched her disappear from his mind's eye, all links severed, his head righting itself once more. Emptiness reconstructed.

But she was still there, watching him, eyebrow slightly quirked, smile fading. She was worried; she now recognized the methods he used to maintain his cold stoicism.

At least, however, she was now firmly _outside_, in every sense.

"I'll be back next week, Professor."

And then she really did vanish, lost behind a solidly-slammed door.

* * *

The hallways were dim but not dark. He could hear sobs echoing behind the door to his right, muffled by several feet of thick oak. The door melted at the slightest push, and he saw the soft moonlight drifting across the floor like frost, coating the curved arch of the girl's slumped back.

She was bent over cards, watching their forms grayed by the threadbare streak of midnight light that trickled through the window shades. The images were random to him: a demon with a man and woman in thrall; a woman crying in her bed while swords stabbed through the red lump of her heart; a single stave, strong and vital, dominating a world of shadow.

But he did not need to understand the meaning of the cards. He felt it as the girl felt it, emotion and thought running strong, like music counter-pointing a dance. _He will win. The Dark Lord will win. It's hopeless. It's all here. If he merely—_

A woman's voice, soft and familiar, tickled the silence.

"Severus!"

He turned. It was not Lina Branch this time. It had nothing, in fact, to do with Lina Branch.

"Severus, is that you?"

Somehow the dim room had blossomed into the bustling of Diagon Alley. People were brushing past, hardly noticing their two forms stopped on the pavement, an island surrounded by jetties of dim faces. The woman—_she_—was standing before him, green eyes alight but cautious, baby resting on a slender hip. _He had her eyes_.

"Lily." He wasn't sure he'd said it out loud.

"Severus, how are you? You look tired. They must be overworking you. I haven't heard much from you since—"

_No._

_No._ This wasn't right. _Get out. Get. Bloody well. OUT._

The baby vanished. She vanished. Every billboard and shopfront dissolved back to black.

And Lina Branch lay crunched against herself on the floor once again. But she wasn't crying. She wasn't _moving_. The moonlight had been replaced by the dingy brown-yellow light of a single lamp.

_What was—_

The surroundings refocused the buzzing in his brain, and he recognized the bookcase. The lamp. The carpet. The thick lace of cobwebs in the corners. The wand grasped, knuckle-white.

_Shit_.

Lina groaned and rolled slightly, managing, after several moments, to prop herself up, shaking, on one arm.

"Fucking hell, Snape!" she spat, probing her face closely and wincing as her finger brushed a particularly purple patch across her cheek.

Yes, he'd done something. She looked worse than Dumbledore had during that first lesson. Jelly Legs jinx, it had been, leaving him a stunned pile on the floor. He just hoped he hadn't done something worse this time. Occlumency could be a dangerous business.

"You hit me with Impedimenta, you arse!" she hissed, looking highly motivated to even the score with a well-placed slug to the chin. Suddenly, he was quite glad to be dealing with a Squib; he felt quite certain she would have flung any number of hexes at him otherwise.

He offered her a hand and hefted her up unceremoniously, though watching her balled fists for any sign of follow through. "It was unintentional, I assure you."

"Hnh."

"Believe me. I would have chosen a much more _interesting_ curse if given the choice," he grumbled, taking her face firmly in hand once more. She jerked away, trembling slightly, unwilling to let him touch her again. It must have been sometime, he supposed, since she'd met a curse face to face. "Hold _still_."

"Like hell I will! You're not bringing that sodding wand anywhere near me." She batted the object away as he retook her face.

"Don't be ridiculous. I'm just going to heal the bruise so you don't have to walk around looking like one of Malf—" He bit his tongue very, very hard. _Like one of Malfoy's mistresses_, he was going to finish. It was a reflexive phrase among his ex-Death Eater colleagues; it would have proven the definition of bad taste in present company.

Either a guess at the unsaid remainder of the comment or an appreciation of his rare self-censorship seemed to sober her slightly, and she lowered her hands, allowing him to replace the blooming black with unmarked white. She reached up, shifting her jaw warily.

She had mastered it now, no doubt of that. She was an Occlumens. In fact, she was something beyond: Occlumens and half-way Legilimens in one. Somehow her Sight or her internally-focused magic allowed her to latch on once a connection was made—to combine memories. The experience was unlike any Legilimency he knew. It was not reading of the mind; it was a meeting of _minds_.

"Anywhere else?" he asked, releasing her completely and putting some deliberate distance between them.

"No, no," she murmured, finding the nearest seat, testing her repaired cheek with a light prodding. "I just gave the table a good knock."

"Water?"

Her tone was an undeniable _you-owe-me_. "Whiskey."

Not up to arguing the point—after all, she _had_ provoked it—he conceded, conjuring two small glasses, amber and ice.

She held the cool glass to her face, words fragmented behind the sharp cut corners. "Well—I think I've got it."

"Indeed," he said, jostling ice and avoiding the persistent ache of the memory she'd managed to unearth. Did she realize what she was doing? Could she control it, reverse the process? It was a shame they were trying so hard to keep her out of the Dark Lord's clutches. Who knew what the girl could see if he subjected her to Legilimency. The entire mind of Voldemort opened up to her supposedly defenseless eyes.

The problem was he'd likely kill her when it was done. He had no great love of Squibs and even less of Occlumens who got caught.

He'd only keep her alive if he knew her other ability. And that was what they must prevent—at all costs.

He suddenly felt very strange in this line of thought, going on as if it were eleven years earlier, and the Dark Lord was a real, everyday presence. After all, he wasn't lurking in corners anymore. He was supposed to be gone. There had been no word, no hint of him since that night--

The memory turned in his skull, and he pushed it away with a draw of liquor.

No hint save the faint whisper of the Mark. And the girl's somehow _very_ convincing word.

"So—that was her? Lily Potter?" Her voice advanced, timorous and respectful, but her eyes remained trained on her drink.

He recalled, with an unpleasant lurch, just how much of that memory the girl could understand. Reading his memories, she was merely putting pictures to an already far too familiar story. "Yes." _And if you think of saying anything more on _that_ subject, it'll get worse than Impedimenta_. His firm glare did all this implying.

But she didn't seem keen on exploring the scene; perhaps she knew enough already. She certainly knew more than he'd ever told anyone—maybe more than he'd admitted even to himself. _Damn._

"I—I'm sorry. That sort of slipped in somehow. I think—when I'm constructing the lies—it somehow connected me with you…I didn't try to…"

He frowned.

"But I could feel a difference. Suddenly, everything felt bigger—inside. And when I stretched out, I felt new memories trickling in. When I redirected my concentration, they just—took over." Judging from her wrinkled nose and the habitual track of hand through hair, it had felt quite unpleasant. "Perhaps my pent up magic just rushes out when there's an internal focus available to it. But it felt—dangerous. Like I would get lost if I wasn't careful." She shook her head as if still trying to banish the sensation. "Like those accounts you read about Animagi who forget their human forms. Good whiskey, by the way. I normally hate conjured food and drink, especially liquor. It loses the subtleties. But this—"

"I believe, Miss Branch, that that little demonstration of Occlumency means we are done with our lessons," he said, a bit more sternly than he'd intended. He sipped the last of his own drink. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't anything to compare to the real stuff he kept. She was being polite, a sure sign that this conversation needed to end. "You seem to have mastered the art, even with my—with the distractions of touch."

"Indeed." Flat words to match flat eyes.

"Assuming, of course, that the little picturesque scene of you reading those cards was—"

"A lie?" She quirked a half-grin. "So you couldn't tell?"

He didn't respond. Whiskey poured from his wand to refill his pitifully empty glass. Perhaps when she left, he'd pull out the good stuff. After all, reason to celebrate—regaining his last month of summer. And, besides, if things went well, he'd have another victory to take to Dumbledore…

She chuckled, holding her own glass forward, brusque. "Yes, it was. I was actually reading my mum's cards then. The emotion was easy to twist."

He refilled her glass deliberately. He did still have that one more thing.

"Well, then you have learned Occlumency, at least as far as you'll need." He shifted his weight, trying to predict how she'd react to what he was about to ask of her. She might not mind—but he doubted that. The girl was secretive, especially when it came to her "gift." But, after all, she had made the deal in the first place…

"I, however, have made lamentable progress in hearing anything as to the whereabouts of your precious _Velius_…"

She stilled, fully sobered and attentive. Like a good Slytherin, she could sense the prelude to something unpleasant.

He leaned forward, like a good Slytherin, knowing how to press into the stilled fear of an opponent. "You said I would find it; you said you'd seen that…?

And she sat back, perfect complement in their Slytherin push-pull tango. "Yes, I did." Her punctuation had grown physical, her eyes cautionary. _Perhaps_, her whole demeanor warned, _you are looking for another round of combat? Do not, for a moment, make the mistake of thinking me defenseless…_

"I'm not calling you a liar, Miss Branch," he tumbled forward, pressing the unspoken gray threat in her gaze aside with seasoned ease. "I was merely curious. Since you have such a gift for peering into such mysteries, have you not considered using your ability to discover the location of the item in question?" He lifted his glass to rest at a calculated angle as he waited for her reply.

"I have. I tried—several years ago." The words were hard, staccato, like the clap of a door slammed shut. "It is—very difficult to read for inanimate objects."

"Ah, but surely not for someone of your skill. What I have seen has led me to believe your ability quite…accurate. Brutally so, even." He sneered, watching her draw a little further into her seat. "And, since I assume you are _entirely sincere_ in holding up _your_ end of this bargain, I shouldn't think you'd object to giving it a good, sporting try."

The column of her neck twisted, and the sharpness of her gaze relocated to an apparently fascinating side table. "Very well. I will try the reading and contact you with the result."

"Would not now be a more expedient solution? I have a table just here. I'll even be prevailed upon to uncork some decent liquor, if that could persuade you." He set his glass aside, slow, with relish, sensing the girl's routes of escape closing off, one by one. "After all, as you have reminded me, this agreement of our is of vital and _immediate_ importance."

Gray gaze lashed against his cheek. Her eyes were shining though the rest of her remained the word-for-word definition of composed. "I—don't have my cards," she said, a bad attempt at breeziness, as if, somehow, she fully expected the countermove before he made it.

_Check and mate._

"Well, I acquired a deck for just this purpose," he obliged her, producing a silk-draped package from his robes and laying it on the table with the most gentle finality. "I've borrowed them from a colleague." _With great, personal hardship, damn it._ He'd had to endure an hour-long Floo lecture on the intricacies of cartomancy from Sibyll Trelawney. Five minutes of conversation with that woman should merit an Order of Merlin. The least the girl could do to reward him was get on with it…

Her eyes did not leave the package on the table, seemingly transfixed. He recognized the expression. Dumbledore had the same creeping stillness when he found himself in check.

A hand rowed through her hair at last as she pulled the silk back to reveal an innocent, inert stack of cards. "I'll take that liquor now, then."

By the time he returned with an uncorked bottle of Banshee's Best, she had separated the neat stack into at least ten haphazard piles, shuffling through one, examining it as he examined a new batch of potion ingredients, face drawn in appraisal. Her fingers slid through each stack, smooth and sure, and he remembered for a brief moment the dexterous movement of her fingertips against his palm as she sorted the odd Muggle notes.

"Any terrific revelations?" he interrupted flatly, laying a small glass before her, careful not to disturb any of the piles strewn across the table.

Her gaze never left the cards. "I'm not reading them yet." She may not have looked up, but the eye roll was more than clear in her tone. "One doesn't simply pick up a new deck and begin anymore than one throws a lot of plants into a cauldron and begins brewing. Cartomancy is a subtle science."

"I see." His grin drowned in his glass. _A droll if unintentional choice of words._

She shuffled a few moments, frown growing deeper, etching lines around her mouth that he had never observed. "These cards are—well, they're terrible. They've no _essence_. The woman who owns them must be a rank amateur at best."

The chuckle broke free before he could stifle it. "I've always suspected as much. But how—I mean, I didn't tell you—"

"How did I know it was a woman?" She'd begun rebuilding the deck, pressing stack to stack with an entirely vexed sigh. "First of all, they stink of perfume and patchouli. Second, I can feel it on them. Certain women leave a distinct imprint on their cards."

Perhaps it was the Banshee's, but he found himself mildly curious as he watched the cards track through her hands, shuffling easily, one atop the next, with a crisp whisper. Maybe there was something to Divination. It had always sounded like irrational squawking coming from Sibyll's mouth, but he could not doubt this girl's credentials. And besides, he'd grown to recognize the look in a Master's eyes: certainty and focus oblivious to all else. In the center of a storm, the Master's eye trained on his object of love.

Just the way Lina Branch now concentrated all her being on the repaired stack of cards before her.

"An imprint?" he asked, destroying the silence and the stillness that had overtaken her.

She closed her eyes, sighing. "Yes. Every reader leaves an imprint on her deck. In theory, the deck and the reader become intimately connected, allowing for more and more accurate readings—like a second pair of eyes. I do not, as a rule, read any cards but my own. And I certainly wouldn't loan mine out. But, with these cards, it shouldn't really matter. I'll hardly spoil such—"

"What about the _Vel—_"

"There _are_ exceptions." The interruption was clean and matter-of-fact. He recognized it again, an echo of his own pedagogical strategy. If Dumbledore hadn't had reason to keep Sibyll under his eye, and if the girl hadn't been in such a precarious situation, he would certainly have recommended her for the Divination post. She had the natural demeanor of a professor and, of course, a cool mastery of her subject that he found oddly pleasing. "The _Velius_ is such an exception. A very rare few decks were created as tools of great, un-imprintable power. Usually, they were created for the purpose of viewing certain—large matters. For example, the _Velius_ was created by the sorceress Borgia to look into the fates of her most powerful enemies. Making it, then, the perfect tool for the Headmaster's delightful little task." She cleared her throat deliberately, cradling the cards in her hands. "Now, if you please, I prefer some quiet for this. The cards are already going to make this remarkably difficult—more so than it would already have been."

He forgot even to grumble at being chastised in such a way. It felt like he was a student again, setting aside his impatience long enough to dissect the knowledge being offered. He sat back, observing both the cards and the girl very closely.

She paused, another quiet, eye-shut moment before, in a graceful, quick instant, her hands set to their work. He had expected a slowness to the act—some calculated turning of finger and card, mixed with long pauses for interpretation.

But the girl moved as if dancing, with precise, seamless movements almost impossible to follow step for step. Instead it gave the impression of one long motion, images revealed and covered, patterns of color and flesh appearing between them, always trailed by those gray eyes. Gray eyes now gone all quicksilver and well-deep. There was no pause, no mulling, just a dance with the hands, flowing on and on, color and gray, color and gray—

And then it halted. It felt violent, the dancer tumbling to the earth. All the grace backed up, seized, and slammed across her face in an inertial parting of lips.

He looked down at the last image to appear. It was as meaningless to him as the pictures in her memory: a king on a throne, gray sword in pale hands. "What's the--?"

"Do you do Arithmancy?" Her voice, grown three fathoms deeper, seemed to echo, though it was almost a whisper.

"What?"

"Arithmancy? Can you _do it_?" The sudden, desperate weight of her new eyes was almost too much. It was the illusion of Legilimency gone too far.

"Of course. Why—"

"I need an equation. Well, get some parchment, damn you!"

He began to protest, but she was already reciting. "Eth as a constant in the function of Ysil—"

"Wait a bloody moment!" His hands were fumbling through his roll-top desk, a mockery of her earlier dexterity. "What was the first?" He bit the quill with aggravation before dipping it forcefully into a well of emerald ink.

"No. Too late."

She was whispering now, but the depth of her voice had vanished, now tremulous as a barely-formed breath.

It was followed almost immediately by a resounding _pop_.

He had to blink, brief and horrified, before the spell of the reading shattered like a scream.

Lucius Malfoy was standing before him, all aristocratic poise and roving, gray eyes.

* * *

A/N: Thanks again to Whitehound for her thoughts and help!

Next chapter should be along quite soon…


	8. Family Reunion

**Chapter Eight: Family Reunion**

_June, 1991_

There are a few sickening moments in life when the mind, grasping for fear or composure, simply pauses, blank, drawing a single moment into an eternity. The participant must merely watch the tableau before him, trapped behind petrified muscles and eyes that, released from the firm hold of the brain, dart and bounce of their own volition.

This was such a moment for Severus Snape. A rare second trapped in total mental lurch.

He watched as the agonizing moment meandered by, hands frozen on a quill, ink dribbling into an indifferent pool of green. He watched as Lucius' glance trailed over him then swayed, cool, in the direction of Lina Branch. He lingered over her, still as a glacier, for one blink—two—three—before an acutely amused smirk insinuated itself into Snape's blood like adrenaline.

His mind awoke, his body freed from its catch. Quill dropped, and the situation whirred back into motion. A straight line from his hand to his wand traced itself through his thoughts, but he tarried a moment, patience once more taking the helm. "Lucius." The voice had been perfectly tabulated: one-quarter surprise, one-quarter vexation, and a decent half of absolute flatness.

"Severus." Lucius' voice was in no way careful, falling naturally amused from his curled lips. "I was just dropping by for my yearly dose—my gift for Narcissa. Forgive me; I had no idea you would be…entertaining."

_Damn and hell_. He hadn't even thought—but he should have known. Lucius always came the second week of June, like damnable clockwork. For Narcissa's birthday. And, of course, life has its lovely sense of humor…

"I'll just—come back later then, shall I?" Not even an attempt to stifle the chuckle that threatened to tip into a full-out laugh.

"No, no, please. Don't leave on my account."

His head spun towards her voice. It seemed to scream through his skull, though judging from Lucius' suave reaction, it was a mere trick of the mind. _Why on earth would she speak? Why on earth would she encourage him to stay?_

"We were just preparing to say our goodbyes." She'd stood, smoothing her clothes in a way so nonchalant it might have impressed him had his thoughts not been otherwise engaged. She looked quite thin and frail, silhouetted against the vastness of the thick-curtained window, hand trailing through her hair. He noticed her carefully tug down the sleeve of her shirt.

Muggle clothes. Would Lucius think anything of it? It was becoming more and more common for the younger generation to don Muggle clothes occasionally, especially when moving outside wizarding towns. Though it was a practice Lucius, he felt sure, found abhorrent.

"Well, I don't wish to intrude…"

"Not at all." Lucius had adopted his usual attitude around witches below the age of thirty: half courteous suitor, half lord of the manor. "It was my entrance that was, ah, problematic. I am not accustomed to Severus entertaining guests here, I'm sorry. We've not been introduced." He flashed Snape a winning smile.

"Oh, yes. This is Lucius Malfoy. Lucius, this is—"

"Elizabeth. Elizabeth Bennett." She extended a hand. Her _right_ hand, he noted. _Thank Merlin she was paying some attention, even if her choice of alias was patently ridiculous. _She was lucky, he supposed, that the wizard before them would never have sullied his Pureblood eyes with the words of Muggle literature.

Malfoy, predictably, did not settle for an amiable handshake, instead cradling her hand in his and raising it to his lips with studied warmth. Quite studied, in fact. Snape had seen him practice the same ludicrous play of gallantry innumerable times.

And now the girl's composure truly did impress him. Her smile was demure, her eyes making a perfect track from his to the floor and back, all affability and feigned embarrassment. Precisely the genuine reaction he'd observed from every other witch who interacted with Lucius' chivalry.

"My pleasure, Miss Bennett, truly."

Seeing the girl's completely seamless demeanor shocked him back into himself, and he began to gauge the situation. The familiar calculations clicked into place. So Lucius did not immediately recognize her; that was in their favor. No doubt he assumed, from all the smug smiling and suave formality, that this was some form of courtship, or, at the very least, some attempt at bedding the girl. And the girl was handling herself remarkably well, perhaps due to the fact that she'd had some notion of what was coming. How, then, to proceed? He had the requested potion, but it was buried in his storeroom, and he was not anxious to leave his two guests alone even for a moment.

"My dear Miss Bennett, you look very familiar. Have we perhaps met? Did you—"

"Lucius, would you like a drink?" It was the best could do, stalling to give the girl some time to think of a response. "We've opened some Banshee's."

This seemed to please him as well as earn Snape another lascivious grin. "That sounds lovely, actually. Thank you, Severus." He'd known Lucius long enough to hear the mockery beneath the civility. _Plying her with liquor, then?_ He scowled at Malfoy as he proffered the glass. Only, of course, encouraging further knowing smirks.

"Please, let's not stand about in this stupid manner," Lina interjected quietly. "Have a seat Mister Malfoy. I'm sure Severus won't object…?"

Lucius' pleasure seemed to know no bounds, and the flash in his eyes belied a man enjoying a very good joke at his friend's expense. _What was she playing at?_ He'd fully expected her to beat a hasty retreat before any more unfortunate questions had the opportunity to surface. He'd given her a reprieve, intending for her to excuse herself. But she was having none of it. She clearly wanted him to stay—and wanted to stay herself. "Of course not," he said, meeting her gaze quickly. He saw nothing but the genial mask.

They had not been seated even long enough for Snape to raise his drink to his lips before—

"Did you attend Hogwarts, Miss Bennett? We must have met before…"

"Elizabeth, if you please, Mister Malfoy."

"If you'll call me Lucius." His smile dripped sweetness over his brandy.

"Of course, Lucius. No, I did not attend Hogwarts. But even if I had, I would have been young enough to experience the doubtless expert tutelage of Severus here." A hearty chuckle was her reply. "We would not have met there, I'm sure."

"I see, yes. You _are_ rather young for that." A sidelong glance at Snape. He heard the Slytherin subtitle once more. _At least ten years your junior, my friend_. "Perhaps your parents, then?"

Her smile was a masterpiece, and he found himself less and less apprehensive about this line of questioning. She had lies prepared—like a model Slytherin—and, thus far, was managing to deliver them with an aplomb he couldn't have expected from the same girl who'd doused his feet in apple juice just a month before.

"Perhaps my grandfather, but _you_ are too young for that, I'd expect." Another demure eye flutter. _Damn, she could be quite good._ "Actually, I attended Beauxbatons, as did my parents. My grandfather moved my family to France shortly before he passed on."

"Ah. And what brings you back to the Isles then? Severus' good company?"

She chuckled in a way he feared far too Malfoy _not _to be instantly recognized. But the namesake appeared oblivious. "No, though it has been a pleasant bonus." She shot the eye flutter in his direction, in a way that made him, inwardly, quite uncomfortable, and made Lucius raise an eyebrow. _Perhaps she was too good, at times_. "Actually, I came in hopes of opening a shop in Diagon Alley, to ply my trade, as you see." She swept her hands at the cards still lying, inert and naked, on the table before her.

"Oh, you're in the tarot trade then?"

"Well, divination supplies in general," she said, taking an impressive draw of liquor. Maybe she wasn't as composed as she appeared. "Madame Fortuna has a specialized tarot shop in the area already. I'm hoping to offer a wider array of products and services."

_Where are you going with this_, he asked her with a carefully-placed glance. He had to be certain she knew what she was doing, bringing up divination with _him_.

She caught the silent words in steely, veiled eyes. And smiled, damn her. _I know what I'm doing._ He could sense the slow rebuff in the soundless air.

"Ah, I see you've done your research then." Lucius' compliments always had the feel of silk-draped razor blades—politeness prettily covering a sharp intent. "And have you had any success in securing a locale?"

"No—not yet. I have a few places in my sights, but there are always bureaucratic obstacles, especially with the selling of divination artifacts. I believe the Department of Mysteries is likely to put me under before I even open shop."

Lucius nodded solemnly, face turned the hard white of business. "Yes, the Ministry can be difficult to navigate, especially for an independent businesswoman. If you like, I have a few connections there. With a few more details I'm sure we could persuade—"

Snape stood, setting his drink aside. This was going in a direction that could be in no conceivable way beneficial. And it was time to let the girl know. Cosmic knowledge of not, this was his arena, the spinning of lies into truth. He had years of experience with Lucius Malfoy, and something at the back of his brain told him that to continue this already ludicrous farce was to invite disaster. He could quite easily convince either Lucius or the girl to leave, but it had to begin now.

"Excuse me. I'm just going to retrieve Lucius' requisition. I'll be just a moment."

Lina looked up at him, utterly unreadable behind her arranged face. He should have known she was capable of such chameleon-like behavior; he had seen so many demeanors from her, he could hardly be surprised that a Malfoy could concoct a persona so _complementary_ to a Malfoy.

"Yes, yes, let him go, my dear," Lucius sighed, crossing his legs and raising his glass mockingly. "Severus has no stomach for business. We lost him to the Academy long ago."

He did not bother to linger for the girl's rejoinder. He longed greatly for a deep breath and a moment's clear thought in the cold, dark of the storeroom, firmly away from the awkward little family reunion shaping up in his drawing room.

What could she be doing, chatting away with the one man most dangerous to her safety? Surely she realized—she must realize—what he would do if he discovered her true identity, the Squib history beneath that ridiculous Muggle pseudonym. At best, he would have her killed. At worst…well, if the Dark Lord was truly returning, he could imagine only one free wizard who would rejoin their former Master with not a moment's thought. And if that man knew what this defenseless girl was capable of…

No, it had to be stopped. She must realize that. Was she indulging some bizarre nostalgia for her youth? Or some twisted notion of revenge? As pathetic as he sometimes found her, he couldn't believe that. He had to believe there was enough Slytherin in her not to be so foolish.

_Well, perhaps there be method in her madness. _He thought he knew enough of her to judge the girl no fool. Regardless, she clearly did not know the game she was playing, clutching the consummate Slytherin asp to her breast…

He would pull Lucius aside. Ask him to leave. Insinuate what Malfoy had apparently already assumed—that he was romancing the girl and was, besides, tantalizingly close to deflowering her. This, though it would earn him a surfeit of smirks, Lucius would doubtlessly respect.

He would hear about it later; everyone would. Snape the yellow-toothed monk of the dungeons seducing a girl most definitely his junior by a decade…

He'd endured worse rumors, he thought ruefully. It might be a lie somewhat entertaining to embellish upon, actually.

By the time he returned, Lucius was leaned over the table, whispering with the girl conspiratorially. Lina held her half-drunk glass in both hands between them, her neck stretched forward to catch her confidant's quiet words.

"Severus," Lucius called, breaking from his position at the girl's ear with a wide smile. "I have just had a fantastic notion."

He raised an eyebrow, glad he'd taken the brief moment to re-center himself. "Have you?" He held the crystal phial before his guest's gray eyes, making no attempt to hide the violent red of its contents.

"Indeed," Malfoy continued, taking the offering as if it were a refill of liquor, without the slightest trace of embarrassment. Snape wondered if the girl had recognized the contents at all. "Elizabeth was telling me she has some small skill as a Reader."

"Hardly anything to speak of, isn't that what you said, Severus?"

He did not need the fluttering lick of eyes to indicate his cue. "Mmm," was all he could think to say in reply, beginning to feel a wild sort of anger at the girl's rashness.

"Severus is a relentless critic, my dear. I doubt he'd have given Cassandra herself more of a compliment." He turned back to Snape, and his look spelled nothing but trouble. He had some sort of plan. Snape recognized the slight dilation of the icy stare, the elongation of smooth syllables. "And I was informing her of my annual invitation to you on the occasion of Narcissa's birthday. I was thinking perhaps Miss Bennett here would be so good as to help me provide my wife with a reading for the occasion. I was just telling her that I have a very lovely deck I could make available to her for the performance."

The click in his thoughts seemed to echo through the room. _That must be it…_

"There will be several Ministry officials in attendance, including the Minister himself. It might be a good networking opportunity for her. And, of course, I would pay richly for the service of so enterprising a young woman."

"There is no question on _that_ count," she replied with feigned umbrage.

_No. No. _He could see, at once, the road the girl had been trying to drag him down. He turned to her, somber, as if to deny her the option.

"She could come as your guest, Severus. I trust you cannot object to that? I daresay you will be able to enjoy the envious stares of many friends."

Lucius was watching him. She was too. Four cold Malfoy eyes boring straight into his brain.

With practiced ease, the possibilities lined themselves up neatly. If he said no, that would not be the end. He doubted Lucius could be swayed, especially if he was planning something. And, if he pressed the refusal, he had no doubt Lucius would ask the girl as his own guest, just to spite him. He could not be certain what the girl had said in his absence, but it had been enough to win Lucius into thinking her quite eager to pursue relations with either himself or Snape. Lucius was not one to deal out invitations to Malfoy Manor idly or without some selfish profit. The easiest answer would be 'yes.' He could always construct some lie to excuse her when the day came.

"I can hardly deny Elizabeth a lucrative business opportunity," he said flatly, and shot one of her own calculated looks back at her. She couldn't have known, but it was his own subdued, thoroughly Slytherin impression of an endearing gaze.

Lucius, however, recognized it, and appeared ten times more pleased than the oft-referenced cat with the canary. "Wonderful. It will be an even more impressive affair if Severus Snape brings a date." He stood and tucked the glaring red phial into his robes, turning with a slight bow to Lina. "Thank you, Elizabeth. I appreciate the service. The affair will be Sunday next and—" His eyes slid down her jeans. "It _will _be a formal occasion."

"I shall endeavor to be worthy of my company."

It was obscene, he thought, how readily Lucius bent to her sweet, humble voice. The only thing more obscene was the voice itself.

"No doubt you will, my dear. Make Severus here spend half his stipend on some dress robes from Lady of the Lake. A lady who is lovely and can put up with him besides is most certainly worth it."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"And thank you, Severus, for your usual contribution. I'll take my leave. I feel you've long desired my absence." He gave Lina another slight bow and Snape another lascivious smirk.

"A pleasure to meet you, Mister Malfoy."

The insinuating simper he left her seemed to linger even after its owner had popped from existence, leaving the room filled to capacity with a split-second of nauseating calm.

"Fucking, buggering pleasure," she growled, collapsing back onto the sofa like a puppet, strings cut.

He, however, did not collapse. His muscles snapped to pacing, anger pent up in his bones now bursting free, propelling him across the floor with white-hot footfalls. "What in the name of Merlin's pink arse were you thinking, you imbecilic girl!" Apparently it was letting itself out of his mouth as well. "Staying here, talking to him, giving him that idiotic name! He's not some doddering, Flobberworm-brained aristocrat. He's the last—"

"I know what he is, _Professor_." She was not raging as he was, but he felt the slam of her tone, familiar. Hints of the hard hate he'd seen in her before. "Don't talk to me as if I don't know what that snake is capable of. I know—first-hand. Besides I'm not the _imbecile_ who doesn't put damned Apparition wards on his house."

"I've never had to worry on that count, Miss Branch. I am not in the habit of having problematic and patently foolhardy guests to hide." His rage rolled off into a snarl.

"He has the _Velius_. I saw it, just before he appeared. I hadn't made the connection before." The sharpness was gone. "He must have taken it—from my mum—when he…"

The thin, shuddering quality of this assertion almost quelled the remarkable momentum of fury. Almost.

"Be that as it may, I see no way in which you sauntering into Malfoy Manor to read the deck before a roomful of onlookers—and, of course, simultaneously revealing your gift to at least a dozen ex-Death Eaters—can be in _any_ way well-advised?" He ripped the liquor from beside Lucius' abandoned seat and threw it down his throat. "Do you even begin to realize the position you've put me in?"

He'd taken a breath, preparing to continue the diatribe, but the look in her eyes, the certain line of her pale lips, stoppered his throat.

It wasn't the obvious beginnings of tears that rimmed her gaze. It wasn't the trembling hand that worked its usual desperate line through hair.

It was the way she stood, slow and heavy, as if her bones only stacked with determined effort and control. It was the monitored version of that apoplectic girl he'd seen before. The one he recognized. The one he understood.

"I understand all of that, Professor. I hope you likewise understand that it is _I _who find myself in the most dangerous position. If it goes awry, I give you full permission to disavow me totally. Lucius would believe that I was lying to you, using you, readily enough. But let's get this straight: _I'm_ the one in danger. _I'm_ the one who just had to smile and laugh in the face of the man who abandoned me and murdered my mother. _I'm_ the one who's risking my skin—for no personal gain—by walking into that snake pit and reading the cards for the whore my worthless father chose. _I'm _the one taking the risk _and_ the goddamned agony just to fulfill a fucking promise to Dumbledore. Sound familiar, Snape?"

His body lurched, anger suddenly backed in on itself. He was glad of the chair as his knees folded, his thoughts momentarily pausing.

"You questioned my determination to make this reading earlier," she continued, shivering glance drilling down her Malfoy nose straight into his eyes. "I think, at the moment, only one of us here can claim the credentials of an imbecile."

And she sat too, legs wrapped beneath herself, face turned away. The aborted tears had dried, reabsorbed, refrozen into the ice of her eyes.

He swallowed, tasting liquor and bile. The anger was as absent as her tears, and he felt, for the first time in a very long while, the sting of guilt. It was the unfamiliar sensation of being absolutely in the wrong.

He kept his voice unfeeling and flat, but he found it difficult to meet her eyes with equanimity. "You intend to go through with it, then?"

"Yes. It's my only chance to get close to the _Velius_. I doubt I could steal it back, but I will find some way of getting it, if only for a few minutes, to make a reading."

In some effort to ignore the lingering ache of guilt, he allowed his mind to consider this—to draw it to a conclusion. "You could—do the reading for the Dark Lord while he thinks you're reading for his wife."

"No. I'd thought of that. First of all, reading for the Dark Lord will be very draining for me. I doubt I could manage it under the eyes of Lucius, let alone a roomful of—his friends."

She pre-amended again, sparing him out of some obviously misplaced sense of decorum. _Ex-Death Eaters, just say it you blasted girl…_

"Second, the spread would be different, and I don't want to take the risk that anyone could be familiar enough with the art to notice. Anyone with any modicum of tarot knowledge would question me."

"I doubt anyone present would know the difference."

"I won't risk it." Her voice was crisp and final, and he recognized it instantly. He used it often with Albus. It said, _It's my hide we're risking, so listen._ "I'm sure not everyone shares your willing ignorance of the subject."

Divination, true, was something that interested a fair number of witches and wizards, what with its undeniable benefits. He'd always considered those who put stock in such things to be those most impressionable, most afraid, and most pathetic—a view probably influenced by his too-long association of the art with Sibyll Trelawney's doomsday drivel. But the art also interested those most ambitious and most eager to find some short-cut or in-road to power. And that sort would be in high attendance at any Malfoy function. Come to think of it, the majority of the guest list at Narcissa's birthdays was comprised of just such people: impressionable, pathetic, ambitious.

_Perhaps the girl had a point there._

"Well, then, how do you propose to get an unguarded moment with the cards? I doubt Lucius will be eager to let them out of his sight."

She was staring at her empty glass as if wiling it to be full once more. "I will think of something. I'd considered asking him for a private moment to use the cards to read for the success of my business venture. Or to read your cards to determine your suitability as a potential partner. It would be quite easy. I would tell him how impressed I was with the deck—rich men love to hear about the singular splendor of their possessions—and then make the request with a careful mixture of deference, coyness, and flirtation. The man's already all but wrapped around my finger."

He leaned back, once more rather impressed with the girl's cool calculation. Unsurprising, he supposed, in any of the Malfoy line. But the girl was turning that to their—to Dumbledore's—advantage. She was beginning to seem quite familiar.

"I noticed that," he grumbled, willing the remnants of tense anger to loosen themselves from his muscles. "What in Circe's name did you say to him to get him to invite you along so adamantly?"

She smirked, a lovely imitation of her recently Disapparated progenitor. "The usual for his sort. He asked me what I was doing with you. He appeared to think me quite mad. I told him I'd met you two weeks ago, in Knockturn Alley, and that you'd clearly been interested in me. I told him this was only our second time to see one another since and that I found you a most—interesting man. That I was chiefly interested in considering independent men, willing to give me my own space and provide a steady income, which your position at Hogwarts does. He seemed quite amused by that and complimented my disinterested pragmatism in matters of romance."

"I'll bet," he mumbled, shifting a little as he imagined the thoughts that must be running through Lucius' slimy brain.

She seemed to note his discomfort but continued nonetheless. "I then told him that matters of romance are quite distinct from matters of marriage, and that you were the sort of man I looked at as I do my business. This pleased him even more as I was careful to insinuate that _he_ was the sort who would not fall into such a 'business' context. I then thanked him for his offers of assistance with the Ministry, flattered him for having such connections, and said that I hoped our acquaintance would continue regardless of my courtship with you. I was sure to tinge the word 'acquaintance' very subtly. He was just beginning to tell me that he approved of my intentions with you and that he would put a word in for me with both you and the Ministry—that's when you came back."

"So, you basically told him you were looking at involvement with me as a business venture, but that you would not be opposed to an awestruck roll in the hay, so to speak, with him?"

"Pretty much."

"And…that worked?" It wasn't that he couldn't believe Lucius could be so easily swayed by the flirtation of a lovely young witch, but Lina Branch was not singularly attractive. And, more than that, he'd have imagined her appeal tainted by her stated interest in the likes of him.

"Of course it worked. While I'm not likely to be a cover girl for _Playwizard_, I am at least somewhat visually appealing, and, moreover, I'm many years younger than he. There is not a rich older man who is not at least interestedin the _idea_ of a younger woman, even those of us who are not great genetic beauties. What one lacks in beauty one can easily make up for in youth and a sickening amount of flattery. The fact that he thinks himself receiving the amorous attention of a friend's romantic interest only adds to the appeal. Men like that are pitifully easy to manipulate. I hardly even doubt that my passing physical similarity to him sweetened the deal. Such gentlemen are also great narcissists."

So she _did _notice her Malfoyesque features in her father's face. It was interesting to see them, so similar, almost the same painting—just with different lighting. "And you puzzled all that out this very moment? The similarities might be more than _passing_ with that sort of calculation."

From the fall of her face, he could tell she hadn't taken that as a compliment in any respect. "Perhaps. But, despite what Salazaar Slytherin might have preached, some things are very much the same between the Muggle and the wizarding worlds. Rich, unscrupulous men exist in both and along much the same lines."

She leaned forward, settling her empty glass, upturned, on the table. A tiny amber droplet, undrunk, wended its way down, like a tear on the dull wood. "My question is: if Malfoy comes by every year at this time, why didn't you ever happen to mention the danger? I probably could have called a more abrupt end to this if…" But she let the huff of the effe hang, dripping through the air, winding slowly through the silence like that drop of brandy. It snaked into the shape of a question mark.

It did not take long to realize what she was asking. Intellectually, he could understand the anxiety. Somehow, however, the thought stung. It had been one of the few enjoyable features of the girl's company, at least since they had declared a truce on reliving his past. Since the afternoon they'd shared the bloodwine, she had displayed an almost implicit trust of his motives, never appearing to dither or to question his allegiance as so many did. He'd thought her gift had led her to this certainty, and he was, admittedly, grateful for it.

But now her voice betrayed it, that all too familiar whisper of question—of doubt.

"Yes, it's true, Lucius pops in every year at this time to invite me to Narcissa's birthday soiree and, more importantly, to pick up his own little gift," he said flatly, refusing to begin with any attempt to justify himself to the woman who had just turned the stakes up tenfold without so much as a _whaddyathink_.

"Lasciviolixir? That's his gift to her?"

She had recognized it. "No, no. His official gift is always something grand and gold that involved the extensive hemorrhaging of Galleons. The Lasciviolixir is his own little gift to himself. His marital bed is usually quite cold, I gather, but on her birthday, he traditionally acquiesces to his husbandly duties. He's never told me the specifics, of course, but I gather he doses himself with it to make the encounter more endurable. That, however, is merely an assumption. I never activate the brew for him; he insists he can get a house-elf to collect the necessary hair. So he could just as easily use it on recalcitrant mistresses for all I know." He shrugged, more than aware of the angry snap in her eyes. She was, no doubt, wondering if her own mother had ever been so dosed. That he could not—and would not—answer. "I assure you that his arrival was genuinely unexpected. I am accustomed to measuring the upcoming event by the impending end of term. I have been a bit distracted from that of recent and I--lost track of time. It flies when one is having fun, haven't you heard?" He gave into himself and refilled his own glass halfway. "Besides, if I'd have planned such an event, I see no reason that you would still be sitting there, smirking in that insufferable way. I imagine you'd have received a far more _immediate_ invitation to Malfoy Manor. Or some other haunt Lucius keeps for business. I'd have thought a Seer would know the truth of such things somewhat _beforehand._"

"Mmm." She'd sat back, gray eyes trained on his, as if measuring every turn of his countenance against what he said. "The future is not a book to be read. What is to come—many aspects of it—can change. Just as people _can_ change but _tend_ not to. As someone who has changed, your cards are—not entirely clear." She smiled. "But that does not keep me from checking. Often. For good measure."

_In other words_, he heard her say, _I'm watching._

"I see," he answered, glad of the brandy once more. It helped him ignore the insistent irritation of the girl peeking into the most intimate spaces of his life. "Well, if you are convinced of my character—" Her smile stretched, brightening even the ice of her eyes. "And you're intent on going through with this, the event will be at Malfoy Manor next Sunday. I will Side-Apparate you from here. Eight o'clock sharp."

He made sure his tone indicated not only his disapproval but also an insistence on punctuality. There was no point in arguing the case further. They would stay long enough to gauge any chances at success, and he could easily make some excuse for an early departure. At the very least, Lucius would believe him eager to be alone with the supposed object of his attentions. Having witnessed some level of control from the girl, he had some confidence in her ability to not make an absolute idiot of herself. And, if it worked…well, so much the better. It would save him devising some other means of getting her to the deck. She was right; it was clearly her neck she was risking.

So why the hell did he still feel so uncomfortable with the whole thing?

_Because, Severus, you're not used to risking anyone's neck but yours…_

"I'll look at the cards, if it will put your mind at ease," she sighed. "But I'll tell you this right now. I _do not_ read my father's cards. I never have and never will. –Don't look so shocked."

He had raised both eyebrows almost without thinking. "I merely thought you would be most curious on that count. And since you delved into my past, present, and future with such attention—"

"_You_ are not my father." Somehow, the way she said this made it sound like more than a statement of the obvious. He could almost understand her sentiments without further explanation.

"Let me put it this way," she continued, voice suddenly collapsed into a softer and more serious hum. "You had such a father. Would you want to see the details of his past, of his time with your mother, even the things you never knew? Would you have risked seeing that he will live to be a joyous two-hundred year old, basking in fortune and prosperity all his years? Or would you prefer to think of him as you do: as a monster who will hopefully, one day, meet a very terrible and just fate?"

He did not respond—did not need to. He merely sat, silent, trying very hard not to allow any vision of his father through the walls of his mind.

"Yes, you see, I do not want to risk seeing that Malfoy will never pay for what he did to my mother. I do not want to see what he put her through, the details I was too young to remember. So I will _never_ read his cards. I will try and divine the situation's possible outcomes by reading my own cards—but that is all I can promise."

He breathed deep. There was a quality to her voice that rang. There was something about her at that moment—as she sat, deconstructed into heavy limbs across his sofa, hair half-masking the white expanse of emotionless face—that exhumed a feeling he had long buried. It was respect, but not the usual sort he admitted when she surprised him with some Slytherin maneuver. This was sincere, as if she had expressed something he could absolutely _feel_, absolutely understand in a way entirely _not_ intellectual.

_Sometimes, hope is better than knowledge. Especially when it comes to matters of justice…_

His tone gave no hint of this sudden, unseemly quirk of feeling. "Well, then, we shall have to proceed as mere mortals, with caution and precaution. I will consider options for hasty retreat should they prove absolutely necessary."

Somehow, as she looked back at him, however, he knew she'd seen it. Something had flashed across her vision, brief but visible, a reflection of his sincerity staring back. It had passed between them, the ghost of a second's unguarded esteem. A tiny smile danced on her lips.

"As will I," she said, regaining her limbs and standing over him. "By the way, I'm a size twelve, and I look particularly smashing in blues and grays."

He had been prepared to stand and see her out, but this pronouncement threw him. "Pardon?"

"My _dress_ size. I wouldn't want you to have to guess on that sort of thing."

His face must have betrayed his utter confusion because her smile grew so wide her cheeks appeared capable of overtaking her eyes. "For my dress robes. As Malfoy suggested. You needn't go as far as Lady of the Lake. I can't imagine your salary would allow for that. But I'm sure Madam Malkin's carries something fitting enough for the occasion."

He would certainly have interrupted with a barb much earlier had his mind not been overwhelmed with trying to decide what on earth she could have meant by such a statement. By the time he'd realized, she was already making for the door.

"You—can't be serious?" He'd searched for something more cutting, but the quick switch of conversation had thrown him. _Weaving like a Slytherin snake_…

"I am perfectly serious." She forced her smile down a few inches as if to prove this. "I don't exactly have a reason to own dress robes, and my dear father made it perfectly clear that I am to show up in nothing but. And, since I am hardly in any hurry to put myself out in the wizarding public's eye—"

"Except for waltzing into a den full of ex-Death Eaters?" He had regained his own height over her, muscles snapping tight once more. He could sense another stone dangerously close to piling itself atop his back, and traveling into Diagon Alley to shop for ladies' dress robes was _not_ a task that fell under any agreements he had made with the Headmaster.

"I'm not particularly excited about that dancing with Death Eaters bit either. But I'm doing it because I must. If, however, more and more people see me out on the town, it will prove more and more difficult not to confront awkward questions about my identity. On top of that, I'd rather not run into anyone who, unlike my father, might actually recognize me from my youth." She paused a moment, as if considering something. The smile returned. "And, on top of _that_—and listen, because this is the part that concerns you—_if_ I have to go myself, I will be forced to tell people what the robes are for. And I _might_ mention who I'm going with and what a snuggly little bear he really is once you get to know him. You might have noticed, I'm rather adept at spinning stories on the spot. But believe me, I'll think up some lovely tidbits to feed the rumor mill. Incidentally, would you prefer to have been wearing black boxers with pink hearts or green boxers with silver snakes when you first regaled me with love sonnets?"

He blinked again—once, twice, three times. She was…taking the piss. Exploiting the moment of solidarity between them, she was trying to push straight through to camaraderie. It was so foreign an occurrence, that it took him several moments not only to recognize it but to summon the requisite venom in his voice as well. "Miss Branch, I _suggest_—"

"Yes, yes. I'm leaving. Just remember, size twelve, blues and grays. Something low-cut but tasteful."

_No, that was definitely _not_ respect he'd felt_. He'd deny it all the way to the grave. "Good _day_, Miss Branch."

But, after he'd slammed the door with all the force he could muster, he couldn't deny the small smile that disrupted the habitually stern arrangement of his face.

* * *

A/N: Wow:::rubs her eyes::: Did some actual plot sneak in there? How did _that_ happen? 

Thank you to my reviewers. It is fabulous to know that someone (outside of myself, and the woefully-underpraised beta, Whitehound) is actually reading this.

I am sorry to burst your bubble, wynnleaf, but there is no true plot-twisty significance in Snape noting that Lina is a lot like Dumbledore. If anything, I think, it's just something that helps Snape understand Lina and even (but don't tell him I told you this) enjoy her company at times. The same significance, in a way, of his repeatedly noting that she reminds him of himself…

Although I'll admit, when you said that, I thought, _Ooo, that would be a lovely twist_. I spent about fifteen minutes trying to see if I could work that angle... but gave up. Oh, to have the imagination of my readers!

I hope this chapter makes up for that "cliffie" I inflicted upon you. Next chapter, a very brief moment back in the "present…"


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